The economics of rational expectations and efficient markets has gradually acquired a virtual monopoly on senior university appointments and research funding.

The idea of rational expectations, another assertion with no empirical backing, had even greater political and financial impact.

Rational expectations allowed theoretical economists from the early 1970s onwards to prove, with apparently mathematical certainty, that government policies designed to boost economic activity in a recession would not work.

This work provides a bridge between the rational expectations and the herding literatures.

The latter idea gave us the notion of so-called rational expectations.