How Do Inflation Expectations Form? New Insights from a High-Frequency Survey

We provide new insights on the formation of inflation expectations - in particular at a time of great financial and economic turmoil - by evaluating results from a survey conducted from July 2009 through July 2010. Participants in this survey answered a weekly questionnaire about their short-, medium- and long-term inflation expectations. Participants received common information sets with data relevant to euro area inflation. Our analysis of survey responses reveals several interesting results. First, our evidence is consistent with long-term expectations having remained well anchored to the ECB's definition of price stability, which acted as a focal point for long-term expectations. Second, the turmoil in euro area bond markets triggered by the Greek fiscal crisis influenced short- and mediumterm inflation expectations but had only a very small impact on long-term expectations. By contrast, long-term expectations did not react to developments of the euro area wide fiscal burden. Third, participants changed their expectations fairly frequently. The longer the horizon, the less frequent but larger these changes were. Fourth, expectations exhibit a large degree of time-variant non-normality. Fifth, inflation expectations appear fairly homogenous across groups of agents at the shorter horizon but less so at the medium- and long-term horizons.

Using microdata from the European Consumer Survey (CES) for 11 European countries and 53 months, we investigate the formation and heterogeneity of inflation expectations as well as their theory consistency with the Phillips curve in the euro area, and across countries and demographic groups. We examine how individuals in the euro area form their inflation expectations. Our findings show that people place significant weight on their current perception of inflation. Past experiences with prices also play a role, though to a lesser extent. Importantly, the formation of expectations tends to be forward-looking rather than backward-looking. A similar pattern emerges when we analyze the consistency of these expectations and perceptions with the Phillips Curve theory. Individuals in the euro area generally do not hold theory-consistent expectations regarding inflation. We find notable variations across gender, age, income, education level, household size regarding the formation of inflation expectation.

Significant mismatches often present between realized and perceived inflation rates in the Euro Area, thus diverging their relationships with inflation expectations. This study clarifies the roles of realized and perceived inflation in the formation of inflation expectations in the Euro Area. The theoretical framework indicates that perceptions directly influence expectations through noticeable personal experiences and cognitive heuristics, while realized inflation dilutes this effect via statistical learning and dissonance reduction. Empirical evidence from frequency-domain Granger-causality tests shows that perceived inflation drives expectations across all time horizons, but its impact is diluted when realized inflation is taken into account. The dilution effect of realized inflation is more pronounced over longer horizons. These findings highlight the causal mechanisms underlying expectation formation, showing that consumers rely not only on official statistics but also on subjective perceptions, emphasizing the importance of managing inflation perceptions to guide long-term expectations.

On the formation of inflation expectations in turbulent times: The case of the euro area

Assuming that private forecasters learn inflation dynamics to form their inflation expectations and that they believe a hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) to capture the true data‐generating process of inflation, we aim at establishing the role of backward‐ and forward‐looking information in the inflation expectation formation process. We find that longer term expectations are crucial in shaping shorter horizon expectations. While the influence of backward‐looking information seems to diminish over time, we do not find evidence of a structural break in the expectation formation process of professional forecasters. Our results further suggest that the weight put on longer term expectations does not solely reflect a mean‐reverting process to trend inflation. Rather, it might also capture beliefs about the central bank's long‐run inflation target and its credibility to achieve inflation stabilization.

During the Great Crisis, most governments in industrial countries supported their domestic financial sector under stress and responded to strong declines in output growth with fiscal stimulus packages. Starting in 2010, attention focused on the sustainability of the resulting debt burdens. We conduct an empirical study to test whether in the United States, the euro area and the United Kingdom, views on the sustainability of fiscal burdens have influenced markets’ assessment of central banks’ commitment to price stability. Using a daily measure of inflation expectations extracted from nominal and indexed-linked government bonds, or inflation swaps, we test whether these react to alternative measures of fiscal burdens. These include rescue package announcements, credit default swap (CDS) spreads and changes in either the outlook or the credit rating of governments. We find no evidence of a significant effect of market participants’ perceptions of fiscal burdens on long-term inflation expectations in the United States, the euro area and the United Kingdom. These results are broadly consistent with the view that long term inflation expectations have remained well anchored.

In line with other recent studies, we find that oil price changes have had a statistically significant impact on long-term inflation expectations in the euro area since the global financial crisis. However, over the same period, (i) oil prices have shifted together with economic indicators, such as stock prices, and (ii) the correlation between short- and long-term expectations has increased. Once these factors are taken into account, the effect of oil prices on long-term inflation expectations is no longer significant. This suggests that the link between oil prices and long-term inflation expectations is not direct, but rather the result of underlying factors: the prolonged feeble economic conditions and the possible de-anchoring of long-term inflation expectations from the objective of price stability.

Using a new survey of firms’ inflation expectations in France, we provide novel evidence about the measurement and formation of inflation expectations on the part of firms. First, French firms report inflation expectations with a smaller, but still positive, bias than households and display less disagreement. Second, we characterize the extent and manner in which the wording of questions matters for the measurement of firms’ inflation expectations. Third, we document whether and how the position of the respondent within the firm affects the provided responses. Fourth, because our survey measures firms’ expectations about aggregate and firm-level wage growth along with their inflation expectations, we are able to show that expectations about wages are even more condensed than firms’ inflation expectations and almost completely uncorrelated with them, indicating that firms perceive little link between price and wage inflation. Finally, an experimental treatment indicates that an exogenous change in firms’ inflation expectations has no effect on their aggregate wage expectations.

Using a new survey of firms’ inflation expectations in France, we provide novel evidence about the measurement and formation of inflation expectations on the part of firms. First, French firms report inflation expectations with a smaller, but still positive, bias than households and display less disagreement. Second, we characterize the extent and manner in which the wording of questions matters for the measurement of firms’ inflation expectations. Third, we document whether and how the position of the respondent within the firm affects the provided responses. Fourth, because our survey measures firms’ expectations about aggregate and firm-level wage growth along with their inflation expectations, we can show that expectations about wages are even more condensed than firms’ inflation expectations and almost completely uncorrelated with them, indicating that firms perceive little link between price and wage inflation. Finally, an experimental treatment indicates that an exogenous change in firms’ inflation expectations has no effect on their aggregate wage expectations.

Using a new survey of firms’ inflation expectations in France, we provide novel evidence about the measurement and formation of inflation expectations on the part of firms. First, French firms report inflation expectations with a smaller, but still positive, bias than households and display less disagreement. Second, we characterize the extent and manner in which the wording of questions matters for the measurement of firms’ inflation expectations. Third, we document whether and how the position of the respondent within the firm affects the provided responses. Fourth, because our survey measures firms’ expectations about aggregate and firm-level wage growth along with their inflation expectations, we are able to show that expectations about wages are even more condensed than firms’ inflation expectations and almost completely uncorrelated with them, indicating that firms perceive little link between price and wage inflation. Finally, an experimental treatment indicates that an exogenous change in firms’ inflation expectations has no effect on their aggregate wage expectations.

Long-term inflation expectations taken from the Survey of Professional Forecasters are a major source of information for monetary policy. Unfortunately, they are published only on a quarterly basis. This paper investigates the daily information content of inflation-linked swap rates for the next survey outcome. Using a mixed data sampling approach, we find that professionals account for the daily dynamics of inflation swap rates when they submit their long-term inflation expectations. We propose a daily indicator of professionals’ inflation expectations that outperforms alternative indicators that ignore the high-frequency dynamics of inflation swap rates. To illustrate the usefulness of the new indicator, we provide new evidence on the (re-)anchoring of U.S. inflation expectations.

The Bank of Russia uses monthly InFOM survey data to provide a quick estimate of household inflation expectations. A more complete picture of the interrelationships between inflation expectations and the consumer and financial behavior of individuals can be derived from data in the fifth iteration of the Russian National Household Survey of Consumer Finance (Survey of Household Finance — SHF), which for the first time included questions about inflation expectations. This paper compares the results of these surveys, analyzes the reasons for variation of inflation expectations in the SHF, and studies possible ways in which these expectations influence individual behavior. Comparison of the InFOM and SHF data shows that the amount of inflation expected by various socio-demographic groups in the SHF is always higher than in the InFOM survey. However, the inflation expectations in these surveys are not otherwise uniform. Such factors as socio-demographic characteristics, financial situation, perceptions of economic conditions, and the financial literacy of members in a household are the main factors that cause inflation expectations to differ. For example, lower inflation expectations are more typical for young people with higher income and greater financial literacy. The SHF respondents’ decisions about consumption and acquisition of financial assets are nevertheless quite rational. Those who expect higher inflation tend to spend more and at a faster pace while saving less. The results obtained here constitute another argument for maintaining price and financial stability as well as for increasing the financial literacy of the population.

The analysis of inflation expectations is extended by distinguishing between short-term and long-term expectations using data from financial markets. The term structure of inflation expectation is explicitly considered. The adaptive expectations hypothesis obtains strong support from the data, while the Frenkel hypothesis can clearly be rejected. This result is clearly at variance with those obtained in Lahiri (1981).

We investigate whether ECB balance sheet policy announcements in the wake of the global financial crisis have affected the ECB’s monetary policy credibility as measured by long-term inflation expectations, by looking at their effects on euro area inflation swap rates of maturities up to 10 years. We consider asset purchase programmes and long-term refinancing operations with maturities above 6 months. We find that these announcements only led to a slight increase in long-term inflation expectations. We therefore find no strong evidence to suggest that ECB balance sheet policy announcements have led to much higher long-term inflation expectations, suggesting that the monetary policy credibility of the ECB has not been harmed by these policies.

This paper investigates how inflation expectations of individuals are formed in India. We investigate if the news on inflation plays a role in the formation of inflation expectations following the epidemiology-based work by Carroll (Q J Econ 118(1):269–298, 2003). The standard literature on this topic considers news coverage by the print and audio-visual media as the sources of formation of inflation expectations. Instead, we consider the Internet as a potential common source of information based on which agents form their expectations about future inflation. Based on data extracted from Google Trends, our results indicate that during the period 2006–2018, the Internet has indeed been a common source of information based on which agents have formed their expectations about future inflation, and the Internet search sentiment has had some impact on inflation expectations. Additionally, based on the inflation expectations series derived from the Google Trends data, we find that there is presence of “information stickiness” in the system since only a small fraction of the population update their inflation expectations each period.