Consumer Inflation Expectations Research Articles

How Credible Is the Central Bank of Russia to Russian Households?

The article examines the degree of public trust in the Central Bank of Russia after the transition to inflation targeting. For this purpose, the author analyzes available data from inFOM consumer surveys of confidence in the Bank of Russia as a whole as well as in its inflation targets from 2014 to 2024. Public confidence in the Bank of Russia remained relatively high from 2014 to 2017 as inflation targeting was adopted, but the Bank became far less credible to households from 2019 to 2022 because they did not believe the inflation target of 4% was achievable by the end of the current year or over the medium term. This is probably due to their lack of awareness that the Bank’s principal goal is price stability even though they are actually experiencing high inflation. The households surveyed think that government authorities are largely responsible for controlling inflation. Furthermore, consumers do not take notice of the information provided by the Central Bank of Russia. Using news articles from Russian media, posts from news communities on the VKontakte social network, and Google Trends search queries, the author shows that consumers who ignore information about the Bank’s policy are at a serious disadvantage when there is economic uncertainty. The discrepancy between the inflation expectations of consumers and professional forecasters diminishes as the volume of information tied to the phrase “Bank of Russia” increases in media, social network posts, and online searches.

Consumer inflation expectations: Daily dynamics

We use high frequency identification methods to study the response of consumer inflation expectations to many different types of events using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations. We identify the response of expectations to a large set of shocks, including FOMC meetings and macroeconomic data releases. We find that macroeconomic news and FOMC meetings with a press conference or rate cuts jointly move expectations.

Indirect consumer inflation expectations: Theory and evidence

Based on indirect utility theory, we ask consumers about the change in their incomes that would be required to offset expected price changes and buy the same amounts of goods and services one year ahead in a large-scale, high-frequency survey of consumers in the US and 14 other countries. Aggregating responses across consumers provides an alternative, indirect measure of inflation expectations compared with conventional, direct measures, but with theoretically lower ex-post forecast errors. The survey responses show that indirect consumer inflation expectations vary based on age, gender, individual inflation experiences, and local shocks. Exploiting rich cross-sectional variation, inflation expectations increase by slightly more in response to gasoline price changes than implied by their expenditure share.

The influence of supermarket prices on consumer inflation expectations

Using data on the inflation expectations of 85 thousand consumers and a unique data set of price changes at Australian supermarkets, we show that consumers form inflation expectations that are excessively influenced by particular elements of the cross-sectional distribution of price changes. The estimates provide novel evidence that the right tail of supermarket price changes, which has largely been ignored in the literature to date, is a material factor in explaining inflation expectations. The right tail of supermarket price changes materially raises inflation expectations, particularly for lower income households, leading to the presence of income-dependence in the expectation formation process. The results shed new light on the informativeness of cross-sectional supermarket price changes for consumer beliefs about inflation.

Central bank communication and expectations: Evidence for inflation‐targeting economies

AbstractWe seek to investigate the effects of communication by central banks on professional and consumer inflation expectations. Accordingly, we investigate 12 small open economies implementing inflation targeting. The communication tone of the central banks is determined based on their post‐decision releases. We use computational linguistics to quantify this factor. With regard to two subsamples that are identified based on the central bank's experience in inflation targeting, we estimate panel models while controlling for other prospective drivers of expectations. The communication tone of a central bank significantly affects the expectations of professional forecasters from economies with more experience in inflation targeting.

Where do they care? The ECB in the media and inflation expectations

ABSTRACT This paper examines how news coverage of the European Central Bank (ECB) affects consumer inflation expectations in the four largest euro area countries. Utilizing a unique dataset of multilingual European news articles, we measure the impact of ECB-related inflation news on inflation expectations. Our results indicate that German and Italian consumers are more attentive to this news, whereas in Spain and France, we observe no significant response. The research underscores the role of national media in disseminating ECB messages and the diverse reactions among consumers in different euro area countries.

Macroeconomic fundamentals and attention: What drives european consumers’ inflation expectations?

Using survey data on consumer inflation expectations in the European Union countries, we investigate the price, macroeconomic, attention, and geopolitical determinants of European consumers’ inflation expectations. We employ panel data regression with both fixed and random effects. We conclude that when consumers in the EU form their expectations regarding future inflation, they are determined not only by past inflation and the general macroeconomic situation, but also by selected attention variables expressing their search queries on the Internet (SVI based on Google Trends), and uncertainty concerning economic policy (EPU) steps and measures. Moreover, our baseline specification also suggests that inflation expectations of consumers in the Central and Eastern European countries are higher than those in Euro Area countries. These findings are robust to multiple specifications using individual survey indicators of expected inflation.

Disagreement in Consumer Inflation Expectations

AbstractBy carefully matching the data sets from the Michigan Survey of Consumers with the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we show that there exists substantial heterogeneity in the propensity of U.S. households to learn from experts in forming inflation expectations. Additional results for a group of European economies broadly confirm this observation. We advance an extended version of the sticky‐information model to analyze disagreement in consumer inflation expectations. Besides differences in consumers' propensities to learn, disagreement in our model arises from heterogeneity in consumers' fundamental inflation and past expectations and experts' different views about future inflation.

Do words affect expectations? The effect of central banks communication on consumer inflation expectations

In this paper, we sought to investigate the effect of communication by central banks on consumer inflation expectations. To this end, we ran investigations into six European economies that, between 2010 and mid-2019, implemented inflation targeting: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the UK. Consumer inflation expectations were derived from qualitative surveys and quantified by probabilistic method. The communication tone of the central banks was derived from their minutes. We applied the textual method and latent Dirichlet allocation technique to derive minutes content that describes decision and underling economic conditions. For the sample collected, we estimated, controlling for past inflation and industrial production index, panel models. As some data proved to be fractionally integrated, we applied double filtering using the autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average method to account for autocorrelation followed by multilevel modelling. We estimated the model for two vectors of controls and four lexicons. The results suggest that the communication tone of a central bank affects consumer inflation expectations. However, the direction of relationship is conditional on dictionary.

Understanding Which Prices Affect Inflation Expectations

Inflation expectations have an impact on one's economic behavior. We show that the inflation expectations of professional forecasters and consumers are predicted by very different prices. While professional forecasters weigh prices similar to the consumer price index, consumers seem to focus on prices they see more often, such as those for food and new vehicles. These are also prices that have seen disproportionally high volatility since the onset of the pandemic. We argue that heterogeneity in the importance of component-specific inflation can have relevant economic implications and disproportionate effects on consumers' inflation expectations that can, in turn, affect economic behavior.

The anchoring of long-term inflation expectations of consumers: insights from a new survey

Abstract We provide new evidence on the level and probability distribution of consumers’ long-term expectations of inflation in the euro area and the Netherlands, using a new monthly representative Dutch survey before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that consumers’ expectations of euro area and Dutch inflation 10 years ahead have not been well anchored at the ECB’s inflation aim of below, but close to 2%. Median expectations have remained elevated above the European Central Bank's (ECB) inflation aim throughout the pandemic. Moreover, individual probability distributions show that expected probabilities of higher inflation (4% or higher) have continuously been larger than those of lower inflation (0% or lower). While policymakers are currently concerned about a possible de-anchoring of inflation expectations on the downside, our results suggest that from a consumer’s point of view de-anchoring of long-term inflation expectations is mainly due to expected high inflation rather than low inflation.

Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations

Surveys often measure consumers’ inflation expectations by asking directly about prices in general or overall inflation, concepts that may not be well-defined for some individuals. In this Commentary, we propose a new, indirect way of measuring consumer inflation expectations: Given consumers’ expectations about developments in prices of goods and services during the next 12 months, we ask them how their incomes would have to change to make them equally well-off relative to their current situation such that they could buy the same amount of goods and services as they can today. Using a massive number of survey responses at a high frequency, we show that this measure of indirect consumer inflation expectations has risen sharply since early 2021. Higher inflation experiences correlate with higher indirect consumer inflation expectations across US cities and around the world.

Understanding Consumer Inflation Expectations during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We study how individuals' formation of inflation expectations are affected by the stringent containment and economic support measures put in place during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using the New York Fed Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) and the Oxford COVID‐19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), we find that policies aimed at containing the pandemic lead to an increase in individuals' inflation expectations and inflation uncertainty. We also find some heterogeneity in the impact across different demographic groups.

Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations: Theory and Evidence

Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations: Theory and Evidence

Understanding Consumer Inflation Expectations during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Understanding Consumer Inflation Expectations during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Are Consumers More Forward-Looking than We Thought? On the Formation of Consumer Inflation Expectations in Us

Are Consumers More Forward-Looking than We Thought? On the Formation of Consumer Inflation Expectations in Us

Making Sense of Consumer Inflation Expectations: The Role of Uncertainty

Making Sense of Consumer Inflation Expectations: The Role of Uncertainty

Inflation expectations and consumption: Evidence from 1951

AbstractWe use rich microdata from the 1951 Survey of Consumer Finances to study inflation expectations and consumption during the Korean War, in an episode when monetary policy was constrained. We provide the first detailed analysis of consumer inflation expectations from that era. Using survey measures of actual and expected spending on durables, cars, and homes at extensive and intensive margins, we show that the difference between consumption in 1950 and expected consumption in 1951 increases with expected inflation. Effect sizes are modest, even though household balance sheets were healthy and inflation was salient.

Consumer inflation expectations, income changes and economic downturns

SummaryUsing a novel, nationally representative dataset containing the expectations of over 300,000 Australians, individuals are shown to form expectations in a manner inadequately explained by popular expectation mechanisms. Approximately one in five individuals form inflation expectations that are negatively related to their own‐income changes, even after accounting for their level of optimism regarding future economic conditions and their observation of economic news. These individuals are more likely to be engaged in manual labour and to be on lower income brackets. The inflation expectations of such individuals rise, even as Phillips curve predictions of inflation fall. The findings are particularly important for inflation dynamics during economic downturns when large numbers of consumers are likely to heavily increase their inflation expectations, potentially resulting in large inflation surprises.

Political Attitudes and Inflation Expectations: Evidence and Implications

AbstractWe show that for the United States and Australia consumers expect significantly lower inflation when the political party they support holds executive office. This finding cannot be explained by previously documented sources of heterogeneity in consumer inflation expectations. It is consistent with stereotypical thinking (Bordalo et al. 2016), pointing to the use of heuristics in the formation of macro‐economic beliefs. Our findings have implications for consumers' understanding of central bank independence and its connection with inflation stabilization.