How food prices shape inflation expectations and the monetary policy response

Food price changes have a strong and persistent impact on UK consumers’ inflation expectations. Over 60% of households report that their inflation perceptions are heavily influenced by food prices and display a stronger association between their inflation expectations and perceptions. We complement this finding with a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) analysis, illustrating that food price shocks have a larger and more persistent effect on expectations compared to a ‘representative’ inflation shock. Finally, we augment the canonical New-Keynesian model with behavioural expectations that capture our empirical findings and show that monetary policy should respond more aggressively to food price shocks.