IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_465_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What�s behind firms� inflation forecasts?

Author

Listed:
  • Cristina Conflitti

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Roberta Zizza

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

How do firms form expectations about future inflation? We investigate this issue by exploiting the Survey of Inflation and Growth Expectations run by Banca d�Italia and Il Sole 24 Ore on Italian firms. Several sources of information might matter in shaping short- and long-term expectations, inter alia media reports, professional forecasts, personal shopping experience, price increases experienced when dealing with suppliers, and the outcome of contract renewals. The specific feature of the wage setting process in Italy allows us to assess the reaction of inflation expectations to exogenous variation in the cost of labour borne by firms. We find that firms� inflation expectations are significantly affected by contractual wage increases. As to the prices of goods for own consumption, proxied by house and fuel prices, only the latter affect inflation expectations; official inflation data and professional forecasters expectations are also important. Results are robust to several specifications using panel and cross-section estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Cristina Conflitti & Roberta Zizza, 2018. "What�s behind firms� inflation forecasts?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 465, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_465_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2018-0465/QEF_465_18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laura Bartiloro & Marco Bottone & Alfonso Rosolia, 2017. "What does the heterogeneity of the inflation expectations of Italian firms tell us?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 414, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    2. Paolo del Giovane & Silvia Fabiani & Roberto Sabbatini, 2009. "What's Behind "Inflation Perceptions"? A Survey-Based Analysis of Italian Consumers," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 68(1), pages 25-52, April.
    3. Lena Boneva & James Cloyne & Martin Weale & Tomasz Wieladek, 2016. "The Effect of Unconventional Monetary Policy on Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Firms in the United Kingdom," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(3), pages 161-195, September.
    4. Saten Kumar & Hassan Afrouzi & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Inflation Targeting Does Not Anchor Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Firms in New Zealand," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 46(2 (Fall)), pages 151-225.
    5. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Is the Phillips Curve Alive and Well after All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 197-232, January.
    6. Zizza, Roberta & Adamopoulou, Effrosyni, 2017. "Regular versus lump-sum payments in union contracts and household consumption," Working Paper Series 2013, European Central Bank.
    7. Francesca Modena & Concetta Rondinelli, 2011. "Leaving home and housing prices. The experience of Italian youth emancipation," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 818, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Salvatore Muzzicato & Roberto Sabbatini & Francesco Zollino, 2008. "Prices of residential property in Italy: constructing a new indicator," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 17, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    9. Michael F. Bryan & Brent Meyer & Nicholas B. Parker, 2014. "The inflation expectations of firms: what do they look like, are they accurate, and do they matter?," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2014-27, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    10. Simon Richards & Matthieu Verstraete, 2016. "Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 6090, CESifo.
    11. Sohei Kaihatsu & Noriyuki Shiraki, 2016. "Firms' Inflation Expectations and Wage-setting Behaviors," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 16-E-10, Bank of Japan.
    12. Ernest Gnan & Johannes Langthaler & Maria Teresa Valderrama, 2010. "Shocks, the Crisis and Uncertainty about Future Inflation: Theory and Evidence for the Euro Area," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 1, pages 26-52.
    13. Simon Richards & Matthieu Verstraete, 2016. "Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," Staff Working Papers 16-7, Bank of Canada.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Tiziano Ropele, 2020. "Inflation Expectations and Firm Decisions: New Causal Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(1), pages 165-219.
    2. Elena Bobeica & Matteo Ciccarelli & Isabel Vansteenkiste, 2019. "The link between labor cost and price inflation in the euro area," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 848, Central Bank of Chile.
    3. Marco Bottone & Alfonso Rosolia, 2019. "Monetary policy, firms’ inflation expectations and prices: causal evidence from firm-level data," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1218, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. Elena Bobeica & Matteo Ciccarelli & Isabel Vansteenkiste, 2020. "The Link between Labor Cost Inflation and Price Inflation in the Euro Area," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Gonzalo Castex & Jordi Galí & Diego Saravia (ed.),Changing Inflation Dynamics,Evolving Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 27, chapter 4, pages 071-148, Central Bank of Chile.
    5. Monique B. Reid & Pierre L. Siklos, 2022. "How Firms and Experts View The Phillips Curve: Evidence from Individual and Aggregate Data from South Africa," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(12), pages 3355-3376, September.
    6. Adriana Grasso & Tiziano Ropele, 2018. "Firms’ inflation expectations and investment plans," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1203, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    7. Antonio M. Conti & Andrea Nobili, 2019. "Wages and prices in the euro area: exploring the nexus," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 518, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cristina Conflitti & Roberta Zizza, 2021. "What’s behind firms’ inflation forecasts?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2449-2475, November.
    2. Monique B. Reid & Pierre L. Siklos, 2022. "How Firms and Experts View The Phillips Curve: Evidence from Individual and Aggregate Data from South Africa," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(12), pages 3355-3376, September.
    3. Adriana Grasso & Tiziano Ropele, 2018. "Firms’ inflation expectations and investment plans," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1203, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. Yosuke Uno & Saori Naganuma & Naoko Hara, 2018. "New Facts about Firms' Inflation Expectations: Simple Tests for a Sticky Information Model," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 18-E-14, Bank of Japan.
    5. Oinonen, Sami & Viren, Matti, 2021. "Effects of Monetary Policy Decisions on Professional Forecasters' Expectations and Expectation Uncertainty," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 74(2), pages 245-280.
    6. Frédérique Savignac & Erwan Gautier & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Olivier Coibion, 2021. "Firms' Inflation Expectations: New Evidence from France," NBER Working Papers 29376, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Haruhiko Inatsugu & Tomiyuki Kitamura & Taichi Matsuda, 2019. "The Formation of Firms' Inflation Expectations: A Survey Data Analysis," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 19-E-15, Bank of Japan.
    8. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar, 2018. "How Do Firms Form Their Expectations? New Survey Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2671-2713, September.
    9. Gabriele Galati & Richhild Moessner & Maarten van Rooij, 2023. "The anchoring of long-term inflation expectations of consumers: insights from a new survey," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(1), pages 96-116.
    10. Dimitris Christelis & Dimitris Georgarakos & Tullio Jappelli & Maarten van Rooij, 2020. "Trust in the Central Bank and Inflation Expectations," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 16(6), pages 1-37, December.
    11. Christian Gillitzer & Nalini Prasad & Tim Robinson, 2021. "Political Attitudes and Inflation Expectations: Evidence and Implications," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(4), pages 605-634, June.
    12. Kumar, Saten, 2020. "Firms’ asset holdings and inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 193-205.
    13. Antonio M. Conti & Concetta Gigante, 2018. "Weakness in Italy�s core inflation and the Phillips curve: the role of labour and financial indicators," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 466, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    14. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Michael Weber, 2022. "Monetary Policy Communications and Their Effects on Household Inflation Expectations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(6), pages 1537-1584.
    15. Knut Are Aastveit & Hilde C. Bjørnland & Jamie L. Cross, 2023. "Inflation Expectations and the Pass-Through of Oil Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(3), pages 733-743, May.
    16. Chris Campos & Michael McMain & Mathieu Pedemonte, 2022. "Understanding Which Prices Affect Inflation Expectations," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2022(06), pages 1-7, April.
    17. Dovern, Jonas & Müller, Lena Sophia & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2020. "How Do Firms Form Expectations of Aggregate Growth? New Evidence from a Large-scale Business Survey," Working Papers 15, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    18. Michael Weber & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Olivier Coibion, 2023. "The Expected, Perceived, and Realized Inflation of US Households Before and During the COVID19 Pandemic," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(1), pages 326-368, March.
    19. Hunziker, Hans-Ueli & Raggi, Christian & Rosenblatt-Wisch, Rina & Zanetti, Attilio, 2022. "The impact of guidance, short-term dynamics and individual characteristics on firms’ long-term inflation expectations," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    20. Thórarinn G. Pétursson, 2022. "Long‐term inflation expectations and inflation dynamics," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 158-174, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inflation expectations; survey data; wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_465_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.