IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boj/bojwps/wp18e14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

New Facts about Firms' Inflation Expectations: Simple Tests for a Sticky Information Model

Author

Listed:
  • Yosuke Uno

    (Bank of Japan)

  • Saori Naganuma

    (Bank of Japan)

  • Naoko Hara

    (Bank of Japan)

Abstract

In this paper, we use a large dataset based on firm-level micro-data from the Tankan survey to examine firms' inflation expectations. We first present two basic findings: (i) firms' inflation expectations are downwardly rigid at zero, and (ii) differences in firms' inflation expectations are larger across firm sizes than across sectors. We then report three findings which are in line with predictions of the simple sticky information model proposed by Mankiw and Reis (2002). First, in each period, a number of firms do not revise their expectations. Second, the frequency of forecast revisions is constant over time. Third, our estimates of the frequency of forecast revisions based on the Tankan survey are much smaller than those in previous studies and are much closer to the value that Mankiw and Reis (2002) assumed in their simulation exercises.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:boj:bojwps:wp18e14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/wps_2018/data/wp18e14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boneva, Lena & CLoyne, James & Weale, Martin & Wieladek, Tomasz, 2016. "Firms’ expectations and price-setting: evidence from micro data," Discussion Papers 48, Monetary Policy Committee Unit, Bank of England.
    2. 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.
    3. Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Inattentive Producers," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 793-821.
    4. Hori, Masahiro & 堀, 雅博 & Kawagoe, Masaaki, 2013. "Inflation Expectations Of Japanese Households: Micro Evidence From A Consumer Confidence Survey," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 54(1), pages 17-38, June.
    5. Andrade, Philippe & Le Bihan, Hervé, 2013. "Inattentive professional forecasters," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 967-982.
    6. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    7. Damjan Pfajfar & Emiliano Santoro, 2013. "News on Inflation and the Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(6), pages 1045-1067, September.
    8. 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.
    9. Koichiro Kamada, 2013. "Downward Rigidity in Households' Price Expectations: An Analysis Based on the Bank of Japan's 'Opinion Survey on the General Public's Views and Behavior'," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 13-E-15, Bank of Japan.
    10. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Information Rigidity and the Expectations Formation Process: A Simple Framework and New Facts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2644-2678, August.
    11. Yosuke Uno & Saori Naganuma & Naoko Hara, 2018. "New Facts about Firms' Inflation Expectations: Short- versus Long-Term Inflation Expectations," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 18-E-15, Bank of Japan.
    12. Dovern, Jonas & Fritsche, Ulrich & Loungani, Prakash & Tamirisa, Natalia, 2015. "Information rigidities: Comparing average and individual forecasts for a large international panel," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 144-154.
    13. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    14. Kouki Inamura & Kazunori Hiyama & Kyosuke Shiotani, 2017. "Inflation outlook and business conditions of firms: evidence from the Tankan Survey," IFC Bulletins chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Statistical implications of the new financial landscape, volume 43, Bank for International Settlements.
    15. 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.
    16. Sohei Kaihatsu & Noriyuki Shiraki, 2016. "Firms' Inflation Expectations and Wage-setting Behaviors," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 16-E-10, Bank of Japan.
    17. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    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. Shuichiro Ikeda & Haruhiko Inatsugu & Yui Kishaba & Takuji Kondo & Kenichi Sakura & Kosuke Takatomi & Takashi Nakazawa & Kotone Yamada, "undated". "Inflation in Japan: Changes during the Pandemic and Issues for the Future," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 22-E-18, Bank of Japan.
    2. 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.
    3. Yosuke Uno & Saori Naganuma & Naoko Hara, 2018. "New Facts about Firms' Inflation Expectations: Short- versus Long-Term Inflation Expectations," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 18-E-15, Bank of Japan.
    4. Jouchi Nakajima & Hiroaki Yamagata & Tatsushi Okuda & Shinnosuke Katsuki & Takeshi Shinohara, 2021. "Extracting Firms' Short-Term Inflation Expectations from the Economy Watchers Survey Using Text Analysis," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 21-E-12, Bank of Japan.

    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. 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.
    2. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    3. Karlyn Mitchell & Douglas K. Pearce, 2017. "Direct Evidence on Sticky Information from the Revision Behavior of Professional Forecasters," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(2), pages 637-653, October.
    4. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    5. Kim, Insu & Kim, Young Se, 2019. "Inattentive agents and inflation forecast error dynamics: A Bayesian DSGE approach," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    6. 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.
    7. de Mendonça, Helder Ferreira & Vereda, Luciano & Araujo, Mateus de Azevedo, 2022. "What type of information calls the attention of forecasters? Evidence from survey data in an emerging market," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    8. 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.
    9. Dovern, Jonas & Müller, Lena Sophia & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2023. "Local information and firm expectations about aggregates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 1-13.
    10. Chou, Jenyu & Easaw, Joshy & Minford, Patrick, 2023. "Does inattentiveness matter for DSGE modeling? An empirical investigation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    11. Antonecchia, Gianluca, 2023. "Heterogeneous expectations, forecast accuracy and firms’ credit demand," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    12. Hassan Afrouzi, 2020. "Strategic Inattention, Inflation Dynamics, and the Non-Neutrality of Money," CESifo Working Paper Series 8218, CESifo.
    13. Lena Dräger & Michael J. Lamla, 2017. "Imperfect Information and Consumer Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Microdata," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(6), pages 933-968, December.
    14. Vereda, Luciano & Savignon, João & Gouveia da Silva, Tarciso, 2021. "A new method to assess the degree of information rigidity using fixed-event forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1576-1589.
    15. 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.
    16. CHEN Cheng & SENGA Tatsuro & SUN Chang & ZHANG Hongyong, 2018. "Uncertainty, Imperfect Information, and Expectation Formation over the Firm's Life Cycle," Discussion papers 18010, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    17. Martin Geiger & Johann Scharler, 2021. "How Do People Interpret Macroeconomic Shocks? Evidence from U.S. Survey Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(4), pages 813-843, June.
    18. An, Zidong & Zheng, Xinye, 2023. "Diligent forecasters can make accurate predictions despite disagreeing with the consensus," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    19. Larsen, Vegard H. & Thorsrud, Leif Anders & Zhulanova, Julia, 2021. "News-driven inflation expectations and information rigidities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 507-520.
    20. Serafín Frache & Rodrigo Lluberas, 2017. "New information and inflation expectations among firms," Documentos de trabajo 2017013, Banco Central del Uruguay.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inflation expectations; frequency of forecast revisions; sticky information model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:boj:bojwps:wp18e14. 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: Bank of Japan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bojgvjp.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.