Josh Stillwagon

Josh Stillwagon is an associate professor of economics at Babson College, formerly at Trinity College, and has previously studied and taught at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Copenhagen. Stillwagon was a member of the 2012 INET Young Scholar Initiative. Stillwagon has also served as a consultant on the New Hampshire state senate finance committee, and conducted research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston about the effects of environmental policies on clean-technology patenting and employment. His primary research agenda pursues two complimentary approaches. The first is to use survey data on traders’ actual forecasts to better understand their expectations formation and risk behavior. In particular, his focus is on assessing whether they are more congruent with REH-based models or those of Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE). The second approach is to use more flexible econometric techniques which allow for non-stationarity, non-linearities, and evolving relationships over time. These more flexible techniques include the I(2) cointegrated VAR and automated model selection algorithms. His work frequently finds support for both IKE and these more complicated dynamics absent in more traditional econometrics.

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New Evidence on the Portfolio Balance Approach to Currency Returns

Paper Working Paper Series | | Feb 2019

Asset markets are indispensable in harnessing society’s diverse views and insights about future business performance. But those views are shaped as much by emotion and crowd mentality as by rational expectations.

Stock-Market Expectations: Econometric Evidence that both REH and Behavioral Insights Matter

Paper Working Paper Series | | May 2016

Behavioral finance views stock-market investors’ expectations as largely unrelated to fundamental factors. Relying on survey data, this paper presents econometric evidence that fundamentals are a major driver of investors’ expectations.

A Keynes-IKE Model of Currency Risk: A CVAR Investigation

Paper Conference paper | | Apr 2013

A core puzzle in Önancial economics is the inability of standard risk-premium models to account for excess returns in currency and other asset markets.

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