IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecb/ecbwps/20242986.html

How income expectations adjust to inflation – a consumers’ expectations-revealed pass-through

Author

Listed:
  • Di Nino, Virginia
  • Aprigliano, Valentina

Abstract

We use inflation and income growth expectations from the ECB Consumer Expectations Survey to measure the subjective expected pass-through of inflation to income in the main euro area countries. By aggregating consumers’ responses to probabilistic questions, we obtain significantly higher estimates of the pass-through than those obtained from micro data. Our methodology allows one to examine how the pass-through varies along the probability distribution of expected inflation, which turns out to be particularly large for moderate inflation expectations. We find significant heterogeneity in the inflation pass-through across countries, ages and income groups, consistent with different wage and pension indexation regimes. JEL Classification: C10, C22, E31, E66

Suggested Citation

  • Di Nino, Virginia & Aprigliano, Valentina, 2024. "How income expectations adjust to inflation – a consumers’ expectations-revealed pass-through," Working Paper Series 2986, European Central Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20242986
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2986~94f19796b8.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kryvtsov, Oleksiy & Petersen, Luba, 2021. "Central bank communication that works: Lessons from lab experiments," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 760-780.
    2. Engelberg, Joseph & Manski, Charles F. & Williams, Jared, 2009. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 30-41.
    3. Bodnár, Katalin & Gonçalves, Eduardo & Gόrnicka, Lucyna & Koester, Gerrit, 2023. "Wage developments and their determinants since the start of the pandemic," Economic Bulletin Articles, European Central Bank, vol. 8.
    4. Jorge Alvarez & John Christopher Bluedorn & Niels‐Jakob Hansen & Youyou Huang & Evgenia Pugacheva & Alexandre Sollaci, 2024. "Wage–price spirals: what is the historical evidence?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(364), pages 1291-1319, October.
    5. Deaton, Angus, 1985. "Panel data from time series of cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 109-126.
    6. Charles F. Manski, 2004. "Measuring Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1329-1376, September.
    7. Francis X. Diebold & Anthony S. Tay & Kenneth F. Wallis, 1997. "Evaluating Density Forecasts of Inflation: The Survey of Professional Forecasters," NBER Working Papers 6228, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Hajdini, Ina & Knotek, Edward & Leer, John & Pedemonte, Mathieu & Rich, Robert & Schoenle, Raphael, 2022. "Low Passthrough from Inflation Expectations to Income Growth Expectations: Why People Dislike Inflation," CEPR Discussion Papers 17356, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Adamopoulou, Effrosyni & Villanueva, Ernesto, 2022. "Wage determination and the bite of collective contracts in Italy and Spain," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Francesca Carta & Marta De Philippis, 2021. "The impact of the COVID-19 shock on labour income inequality: evidence from Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 606, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Kenneth C. Lichtendahl & Yael Grushka-Cockayne & Robert L. Winkler, 2013. "Is It Better to Average Probabilities or Quantiles?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(7), pages 1594-1611, July.
    12. Bernardo Candia & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2020. "Communication and the Beliefs of Economic Agents," NBER Working Papers 27800, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Checherita-Westphal, Cristina & Domingues Semeano, João & Ahonen, Elena & Stinglhamber, Pierrick & Van Parys, Stefan & Clemens, Johannes & Urke, Katri & Soosaar, Orsolya & Vergou, Maria & Flevotomou, , 2022. "Public wage and pension indexation in the euro area: an overview," Occasional Paper Series 299, European Central Bank.
    14. D'Acunto, Francesco & Charalambakis, Evangelos & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Kenny, Geoff & Meyer, Justus & Weber, Michael, 2024. "Household Inflation Expectations: An Overview of Recent Insights for Monetary Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 19167, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Olivier J. Blanchard, 1986. "The Wage Price Spiral," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(3), pages 543-565.
    16. Georgarakos, Dimitris & Kenny, Geoff, 2022. "Household spending and fiscal support during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from a new consumer survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(S), pages 1-14.
    17. Checherita-Westphal, Cristina, 2022. "Public wage and pension indexation in the euro area," Economic Bulletin Boxes, European Central Bank, vol. 1.
    18. Martin DeLuca & Willem Van Zandweghe, 2023. "Postpandemic Nominal Wage Growth: Inflation Pass-Through or Labor Market Imbalance?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2023(13), pages 1-6, August.
    19. Koester, Gerrit & Grapow, Helen, 2021. "The prevalence of private sector wage indexation in the euro area and its potential role for the impact of inflation on wages," Economic Bulletin Boxes, European Central Bank, vol. 7.
    20. Jain, Monica & Kostyshyna, Olena & Zhang, Xu, 2024. "How do people view wage and price inflation?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Okan Akarsu & Emrehan Aktug & Huzeyfe Torun, 2025. "Inflation Expectations and Firms' Decisions in High Inflation: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial," Working Papers 2512, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    2. Dimitris Georgarakos & Geoff Kenny & Justus Meyer & Maarten van Rooij, 2025. "How do rising temperatures affect inflation expectations?," Working Papers 843, DNB.
    3. Jessica Piccolo & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, "undated". "Homeownership and Attention to Inflation: Evidence from Information Treatments," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0317, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    4. Michael Ehrmann, 2026. "Trust in Central Banks," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 492-504, February.
    5. Michal Marencak & Giang Nghiem, 2025. "Personal Inflation Rates in the Euro Area," CAMA Working Papers 2025-17, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    6. Ehrmann, Michael & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Kenny, Geoff, 2025. "Credibility gains from central bank communication with the public," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    7. Philip Schnattinger & Prachi Srivastava, 2025. "Household Inflation Uncertainty and Wage Growth Expectations," CESifo Working Paper Series 12216, CESifo.
    8. Vadim Grishchenko & Maria Lymar & Andrei Sinyakov, 2025. "What information is important for households’ inflation expectations: evidence from a randomized controlled trial," Bank of Russia Working Paper Series wps148, Bank of Russia.
    9. Armantier, Olivier & Koşar, Gizem & Pomerantz, Rachel & Skandalis, Daphné & Smith, Kyle & Topa, Giorgio & van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2021. "How economic crises affect inflation beliefs: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 443-469.
    10. Erwan Gautier & Jérémi Montornès, 2025. "Measuring Households' Inflation Expectations in the Euro Area: The Effect of Panel Conditioning," Working papers 1007, Banque de France.
    11. Tim Munday & James Brookes, 2021. "Mark my words: the transmission of central bank communication to the general public via the print media," Bank of England working papers 944, Bank of England.
    12. Becker, Christoph & Duersch, Peter & Eife, Thomas, 2023. "Measuring Inflation Expectations: How the Response Scale Shapes Density Forecasts," Working Papers 0727, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    13. Manski, Charles F. & Neri, Claudia, 2013. "First- and second-order subjective expectations in strategic decision-making: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 232-254.
    14. Abe, Naohito & Ueno, Yuko, 2016. "The Mechanism of Inflation Expectation Formation among Consumers," RCESR Discussion Paper Series DP16-1, Research Center for Economic and Social Risks, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    15. Becker, Christoph & Dürsch, Peter & Eife, Thomas A. & Glas, Alexander, 2023. "Households' probabilistic inflation expectations in high-inflation regimes," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-072, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    16. Baumann, Ursel & Darracq Pariès, Matthieu & Westermann, Thomas & Riggi, Marianna & Bobeica, Elena & Meyler, Aidan & Böninghausen, Benjamin & Fritzer, Friedrich & Trezzi, Riccardo & Jonckheere, Jana & , 2021. "Inflation expectations and their role in Eurosystem forecasting," Occasional Paper Series 264, European Central Bank.
    17. Gizem Koşar & Wilbert van der Klaauw, 2025. "Workers’ Perceptions of Earnings Growth and Employment Risk," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(S1), pages 83-121.
    18. Becker, Christoph & Duersch, Peter & Eife, Thomas & Glas, Alexander, 2021. "Extending the Procedure of Engelberg et al. (2009) to Surveys with Varying Interval-Widths," Working Papers 0707, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    19. Pallotti, Filippo & Paz-Pardo, Gonzalo & Slacalek, Jiri & Tristani, Oreste & Violante, Giovanni L., 2023. "Who bears the costs of inflation? Euro area households and the 2021–2022 shock," Working Paper Series 2877, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E66 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General Outlook and Conditions

    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:ecb:ecbwps:20242986. 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.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.