Tanja LINTA 's PhD Thesis, 30 October 2026

Essays in Behavioral Macroeconomics

Supervisor

Professor Christian HELLWIG

To participate, please contact the doctoral school

Memberships

Christian HELLWIG : Professeur d'Économie, Université Toulouse Capitole Directeur de thèse 
Camille CORNAND : Directrice de recherche, CNRS, Lyon 2 Rapporteure 
Mirko WIEDERHOLT : Professeur d’Économie, LMU, Munich Rapporteur 
Patrick FEVE : Professeur d'Économie, Université Toulouse Capitole Examinateur 

Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays in behavioral macroeconomics, unified by a focus on how individuals process, use, and value information when making economic decisions, and its implications for policy effectiveness. Each chapter examines a distinct aspect of this question, covering expectation formation, central bank communication, and financial decision-making, and combining experimental and empirical methods with theoretical frameworks. 
The first chapter, “Overreaction in Expectations with Endogenous Feedback”, studies how individuals form expectations in environments characterized by feedback between expectations and outcomes. Using a forecasting experiment, I show that individuals systematically overreact to recent information, but that this overreaction is mitigated by stabilizing general equilibrium feedback. A model with costly information processingshows that such mitigation is feasible only if agents recognize the feedback and adjust their behavior accordingly, thereby amplifying its stabilizing effects. Within the New Keynesian framework, stronger stabilizing feedback attenuates the forecasting bias and accelerates convergence to the rational expectations equilibrium, but does not eliminate overreaction, resulting in excess volatility in inflation responses to exogenous shocks and requiring monetary policy to respond more aggressively than under rational expectations. 
The second chapter, “Forward Guidance and Credibility”, measures variation in central bank credibility through the level of agreement within the monetary policy committee and studies its relevance for the effectiveness of forward guidance. Using highfrequency identification within the ECB’s institutional framework, I show that nonunanimity within the Governing Council leads financial markets to doubt the credibility of forward guidance commitments. Markets respond as if expecting a change in policy direction, despite the ECB promising the opposite, which dampens the effect that the easing bias in communication has on expectations. Confirming unanimity, however, does not seem to reinforce it. 
The third chapter, “Inattention to Financial Information: The Role of Income” coauthored with Manuel Mosquera-Tarrío and Alena Wabitsch, studies how individuals make lifecycle consumption and saving decisions under stochastic returns and how they value information about these returns conditional on their income. In a large-scale online experiment, two factors are randomized: prior exposure to interest-rate information and income level. We find that exposure increases information demand only among high-income participants, suggesting that individuals can learn to value information, but only when stakes are sufficiently high. Inattention thus reflects not only information processing costs but also perceived benefits that scale with economic stakes.