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Inflation expectations of the inattentive general public

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  • Reid, Monique

Abstract

Academic literature on central bank communication has tended to treat a central bank's audience as a single group, represented by the financial markets. However, recognising that a central bank's audience is heterogeneous is advantageous for both modelling purposes and effective central bank communication. This paper focuses on the general public, for whom gathering and processing information are costly. The general public makes rational decisions that limit the time and resources they allocate to the task. As a result, aggregate inflation expectations of the public can be described as ‘sticky’ in that the spread of information about inflation through the economy is not instantaneous. Following Carroll (2003, 2006), epidemiological models are adopted to model the inflation expectations of the general public in South Africa and to estimate the speed at which they update their inflation expectations (information stickiness). Agent based models are then used to verify these estimates of information stickiness.

Suggested Citation

  • Reid, Monique, 2015. "Inflation expectations of the inattentive general public," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 157-166.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:46:y:2015:i:c:p:157-166
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2014.12.003
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    Cited by:

    1. Kabundi, Alain & Schaling, Eric & Some, Modeste, 2015. "Monetary policy and heterogeneous inflation expectations in South Africa," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 109-117.
    2. Pierdzioch, Christian & Reid, Monique B. & Gupta, Rangan, 2016. "Forecasting the South African inflation rate: On asymmetric loss and forecast rationality," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 82-92.
    3. Mochhoury, Sarah, 2023. "Central bank communication and trust: an experimental study on the European Central Bank and the general public," Working Paper Series 2824, European Central Bank.
    4. Christian Pierdzioch & Monique B. Reid & Rangan Gupta, 2018. "On the directional accuracy of inflation forecasts: evidence from South African survey data," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(5), pages 884-900, April.
    5. Christopher Loewald & David Faulkner & Konstantin Makrelov, 2020. "Time consistency and economic growth a case study of south african macroeconomic policy," Working Papers 10421, South African Reserve Bank.
    6. Yingying Xu & Zhixin Liu & Zichao Jia & Chi-Wei Su, 2017. "Is time-variant information stickiness state-dependent?," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 16(3), pages 169-187, December.
    7. Mazumder, Sandeep, 2021. "The reaction of inflation forecasts to news about the Fed," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 256-264.
    8. Pierdzioch, Christian & Reid, Monique B. & Gupta, Rangan, 2016. "Inflation forecasts and forecaster herding: Evidence from South African survey data," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 42-50.
    9. Monique Reid & Gideon Rand, 2015. "A Sticky Information Phillips Curve for South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(4), pages 506-526, December.
    10. Mitja Steinbacher & Matthias Raddant & Fariba Karimi & Eva Camacho Cuena & Simone Alfarano & Giulia Iori & Thomas Lux, 2021. "Advances in the agent-based modeling of economic and social behavior," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-24, July.
    11. South African Reserve Bank, 2017. "Occasional Bulletin of Economic Notes 2017/02," Working Papers 7851, South African Reserve Bank.
    12. Li, Shaoyu & Wei, Lijia & Xu, Zhiwei, 2017. "Dynamic asset allocation and consumption under inflation inequality: The impacts of inflation experiences and expectations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 113-125.
    13. Xu, Yingying & Chang, Hsu-Ling & Lobonţ, Oana-Ramona & Su, Chi-Wei, 2016. "Modeling heterogeneous inflation expectations: empirical evidence from demographic data?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 153-163.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sticky information; Inflation expectation; Inattentive general public; Central bank communication;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

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