Firm Expectations and Economic Activity
基于德国制造业企业调查数据，研究发现企业对未来生产的预期显著影响当前生产和定价决策，即使预期错误也有影响，且预期误差可解释约15%的总经济波动。
Abstract We assess how firm expectations about future production impact current production and pricing decisions. Our analysis is based on a large survey of firms in the German manufacturing sector. To identify the causal effect of expectations, we rely on the timing of survey responses and match firms with the same fundamentals but different views about the future. Firms that expect their production to increase (decrease) in the future are 15 percentage points more (less) likely to raise current production and prices, compared to firms that expect no change in production. In a second step, we show that expectations also matter even if they turn out to be incorrect. Lastly, we aggregate expectation errors across firms and find that they account for about 15% of aggregate fluctuations.