Skip to main content

2024 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics

Lecture & Conference - NOVEMBER 7-8, 2025

"Modeling Agents with (Limited) Foresight"

Michael Woodford
Columbia University

The conventional assumption of rational expectations leads to paradoxical conclusions about the effects of central-bank commitments about interest-rate policy far in the future. This talk will propose that economic dynamics under an announced policy should instead be predicted using a computational model of belief formation. Under certain conditions, the predictions will be similar to a rational expectations analysis, but under others they will be quite different, providing a resolution of the paradoxes.

Video of the lecture

Conference

Group photograph from 2025 Nemmers Conference

Friday November 7, 2025
Time Title
9:05 Mark Gertler (New York University): An Odd Approximation of Inflation for State Dependent Pricing Models (joint with Al-Mahdi Ebsim - New York University, Luca Gagliardone - Yale University, Simone Lenzu - Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University, and Joris Tielens - National Bank of Belgium)
9:50 Jón Steinsson (University of California, Berkeley): Beyond the Taylor Rule (joint with Emi Nakamura and Venance Riblier - both University of California, Berkeley)
11:00 Gauti Eggertsson (Brown University): Deficits and Inflation: U.S. Inflation Surges Since the Birth of the Federal Reserve: 1914–2025
11:45 Christian Wolf (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Fiscal Inaction as Monetary Support (joint with George-Marios Angeletos - Northwestern University, and Chen Lian - University of California, Berkeley)
2:00 Jennifer La’O (Columbia University):Sectoral Salience (joint with Hassan Afrouzi - Columbia University, Benjamin Hebert - Stanford University and John Leahy - University of Michigan)
2:45 Gianluca Violante (Princeton University): Inclusion vs Inflation: Stabilization Policy in the Wake of the Pandemic (joint with Felipe Alves - Bank of Canada)
4:00 Nemmers Prize lecture

Michael Woodford (Columbia University): Modeling Agents with (Limited) Foresight
Saturday November 8, 2025
Time Title
9:00 Silvana Tenreyro (London School of Economics): Negative Rates and the Effective Lower Bound (joint with Michael McLeay and Lukas von dem Berge - both Bank of England)
9:45 Guido Lorenzoni (University of Chicago): Tâtonnement and Price Setting in General Equilibrium (joint with Ivan Werning - Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
11:00 Adrien Auclert (Stanford University): New Keynesian Economics with Household and Firm Heterogeneity (joint with Matthew Rognlie - Northwestern University, Ludwig Straub - Harvard University and Thomas Winberry - University of Pennsylvania)
11:45 Fernando Alvarez (University of Chicago): Small Shocks: Equivalence(s) between State and Time Dependent Models (joint with Francesco Lippi - LUISS University and Panagiotis Souganidis - University of Chicago)

Short Course

A short course for faculty and graduate students on "Cognitive Imprecision and Economic Behavior" held on 
Mondays and Wednesdays, November 10, 12, 17 and 19, 2025:
More Information
Lecture 1 Slides
Lecture 2 Slides
Lecture 3 Slides
Lecture 4 Slides