Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The Role of Media for Inflation Forecast Disagreement of Households and Professionals

Contents:

Author Info

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of media coverage and macroeconomic con- ditions on inflation forecast disagreement of German households and professional forecasters. We adopt a Bayesian learning model in which media coverage of infla- tion affects forecast disagreement by influencing information sets as well as predictor choice. Our empirical results show that disagreement of households depends on the content of news stories (tone) but is unaffected by reporting intensity (volume) and by the heterogeneity of story content (information entropy). Disagreement of pro- fessionals does not depend on media coverage. With respect to the influence of macroeconomic variables we provide evidence that disagreement of households and professionals primarily depends on the current rate of inflation.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.kof.ethz.ch/publications/science/pdf/wp_223.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich in its series KOF Working papers with number 09-223.

as in new window
Length: 38 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:09-223

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Weinbergstrasse 35, CH-8092 Zürich
Phone: +41 44 632 41 28
Fax: +41 44 632 12 18
Email:
Web page: http://www.kof.ethz.ch
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: forecast disagreement; inflation expectations; media coverage; Bayesian learning;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Söderlind, Paul, 2000. "Inflation Forecast Uncertainty," CEPR Discussion Papers 2499, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Ricardo Reis, 2004. "Inattentive Consumers," NBER Working Papers 10883, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Dopke, Jorg & Fritsche, Ulrich, 2006. "When do forecasters disagree? An assessment of German growth and inflation forecast dispersion," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 125-135.
  4. Daron Acemoglu & Victor Chernozhukov & Muhamet Yildiz, 2006. "Learning and Disagreement in an Uncertain World," NBER Working Papers 12648, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis & Justin Wolfers, 2003. "Disagreement about Inflation Expectations," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2011, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  6. Blinder, Alan S. & Krueger, Alan B., 2004. "What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?," IZA Discussion Papers 1324, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  7. Carlos Capistrán & Allan Timmermann, 2009. "Disagreement and Biases in Inflation Expectations," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2-3), pages 365-396, 03.
  8. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2001. "Sticky Information Versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1922, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  9. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2006. "Baby Boomer Retirement Security: The Roles of Planning, Financial Literacy, and Housing Wealth," CeRP Working Papers 54, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
  10. Batchelor, Roy, 2007. "Bias in macroeconomic forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 189-203.
  11. William A. Branch, 2004. "The Theory of Rationally Heterogeneous Expectations: Evidence from Survey Data on Inflation Expectations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 592-621, 07.
  12. Souleles, Nicholas S, 2004. "Expectations, Heterogeneous Forecast Errors, and Consumption: Micro Evidence from the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Surveys," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 39-72, February.
  13. Thomas Maag, 2009. "On the Accuracy of the Probability Method for Quantifying Beliefs about Inflation," KOF Working papers 09-230, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
  14. Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2008. "Evolution of forecast disagreement in a Bayesian learning model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 325-340, June.
  15. Michael J. Lamla & Sarah M. Lein, 2008. "The Role of Media for Consumers' Inflation Expectation Formation," KOF Working papers 08-201, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
  16. William A. Brock & Cars H. Hommes, 1997. "A Rational Route to Randomness," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1059-1096, September.
  17. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
  18. Carlson, John A & Parkin, J Michael, 1975. "Inflation Expectations," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 42(166), pages 123-38, May.
  19. Branch, William A., 2007. "Sticky information and model uncertainty in survey data on inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 245-276, January.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Christina Leung, 2009. "The demographics of household inflation perceptions and expectations," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 72, pages 34-42, June.
  2. Michael Ehrmann & Sylvester Eijffinger & Marcel Fratzscher, 2012. "The Role of Central Bank Transparency for Guiding Private Sector Forecasts," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(3), pages 1018-1052, 09.
  3. Cristian Badarinza & Marco Gross, 2012. "Information flows and disagreement," Working Paper Series 1475, European Central Bank.
  4. Thomas Mayer & Holger Schmieding & Manfred Jäger-Ambrozewicz & Michael Lamla & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Ulrich Kater & Leon Leschus & Wolfgang Brachinger, 2011. "Zinserhöhung der EZB: Wie groß ist die Inflationsgefahr?," Ifo Schnelldienst, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 64(14), pages 03-26, 07.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:09-223

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.