Changing the length of a delay may utterly change behavior. Delays are often sensitive leverage points for policy, if they can be made shorter or longer. You can see why that is. If a decision point in a system (or a person working in that part of the system) is responding to delayed information, or responding with a delay, the decisions will be off target. Actions will be too much or too little to achieve the decision maker’s goals. On the other hand, if action is taken too fast, it may nervously amplify short-term variation and create unnecessary instability. Delays determine how fast
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