We construct a model where the reputational concern of the long-run player to look good in the current period results in the loss of all surplus. This is in contrast to the bulk of the literature on reputations where such considerations mitigate myopic incentive problems. We also show that in models where all parties have long-run objectives, such losses can be avoided.

Economists have long emphasized the importance of expectations in determining macroeconomic outcomes. Yet there has been almost no recent effort to model actual empirical expectations data; instead, macroeconomists usually simply assume that expectations are "rational." This paper shows that while empirical household expectations are not rational in the usual sense, expectational dynamics are well captured by a model in which households' views derive from news reports of the views of professional forecasters, which in turn may be rational. The model's estimates imply that people only occasionally pay attention to news reports; this inattention generates "stickyness" in aggregate expectations, with important macroeconomic consequences.

We use a simple model to outline the conditions under which corporate investment is sensitive to nonfundamental movements in stock prices. The key prediction is that stock prices have a stronger impact on the investment of “equity-dependent” firms—firms that need external equity to finance marginal investments. Using an index of equity dependence based on the work of Kaplan and Zingales, we find support for this hypothesis. In particular, firms that rank in the top quintile of the KZ index have investment that is almost three times as sensitive to stock prices as firms in the bottom quintile.