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Inattentive Economies

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  • George-Marios Angeletos
  • Karthik Sastry

Abstract

We study the efficiency of competitive markets when people are rationally inattentive. Appropriate amendments of the Welfare Theorems hold if attention costs satisfy an invariance condition, which amounts to free disposal of decision-irrelevant aspects of the state of nature. This condition is satisfied by the Shannon mutual information formulation of attention costs. More generally, inefficiency emerges and Hayek’s (1945) argument about the informational optimality of prices fails. Markets are the best means of allocating scarce attention when agents gain nothing from directly contemplating prices rather than the entire state of nature.

Suggested Citation

  • George-Marios Angeletos & Karthik Sastry, 2019. "Inattentive Economies," NBER Working Papers 26413, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26413
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Dominik Naeher, 2023. "The Social Planning Problem with Costly Information Processing: Towards Understanding Production Decisions in Centralized Economies," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(357), pages 285-314, January.
    2. Angeletos, George-Marios & Iovino, Luigi & La'O, Jennifer, 2020. "Learning over the business cycle: Policy implications," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    3. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • E7 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics

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