Learning stability in economies with heterogeneous agents

An economy exhibits structural heterogeneity when the forecasts of different agents have different effects on the determination of aggregate variables. We study the important case of economies in which agents' behavior depends on forecasts of aggregate variables and show how different forms of heterogeneity in structure, forecasts, and adaptive learning rules affect the conditions for convergence of adaptive learning towards rational expectations equilibrium. Results are applied to an overlapping generations model and a New Keynesian model of monetary policy. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.