IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2024-63.html

Inflation Expectations with Finite Horizon Planning

Author

Abstract

Under finite horizon planning, households and firms evaluate a full set of state-contingent paths along which the economy might evolve out to a finite horizon but have limited ability to process events beyond that horizon. We show--analytically and empirically--that such a model accounts for an initial underreaction and subsequent overreaction of inflation forecasts. A planning horizon of four quarters can account for the evidence on the predictability of inflation forecast errors and macroeconomic data. Our identification and estimation strategies combine full-information methods based on aggregate data with regression-based estimates that directly use inflation expectations data.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher J. Gust & Edward P. Herbst & J. David López-Salido, 2024. "Inflation Expectations with Finite Horizon Planning," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-063, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2024-63
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2024.063
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024063pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2024.063?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Yueran Ma & Andrei Shleifer, 2020. "Overreaction in Macroeconomic Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2748-2782, September.
    2. Del Negro, Marco & Eusepi, Stefano, 2011. "Fitting observed inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 2105-2131.
    3. George-Marios Angeletos & Zhen Huo & Karthik A. Sastry, 2021. "Imperfect Macroeconomic Expectations: Evidence and Theory," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 1-86.
    4. Broer, Tobias & Kohlhas, Alexandre, 2018. "Forecaster (Mis-)Behavior," CEPR Discussion Papers 12898, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    5. Xavier Gabaix, 2020. "A Behavioral New Keynesian Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(8), pages 2271-2327, August.
    6. 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.
    7. Alexandre N. Kohlhas & Ansgar Walther, 2021. "Asymmetric Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(9), pages 2879-2925, September.
    8. 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.
    9. Hess Chung & Edward Herbst & Michael T. Kiley, 2015. "Effective Monetary Policy Strategies in New Keynesian Models: A Reexamination," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 289-344.
    10. Andres, Javier & Lopez-Salido, J. David & Nelson, Edward, 2005. "Sticky-price models and the natural rate hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 1025-1053, July.
    11. Sergey Slobodyan & Raf Wouters, 2012. "Learning in a Medium-Scale DSGE Model with Expectations Based on Small Forecasting Models," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 65-101, April.
    12. Michael Woodford, 2019. "Monetary Policy Analysis When Planning Horizons Are Finite," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 1-50.
    13. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    14. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2018. "Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2477-2512, September.
    15. Ricardo Reis, 2009. "Optimal Monetary Policy Rules in an Estimated Sticky-Information Model," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 1-28, July.
    16. Carlos Carvalho & Stefano Eusepi & Emanuel Moench & Bruce Preston, 2023. "Anchored Inflation Expectations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 1-47, January.
    17. Arturo Ormeño & Krisztina Molnár, 2015. "Using Survey Data of Inflation Expectations in the Estimation of Learning and Rational Expectations Models," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(4), pages 673-699, June.
    18. Woodford, Michael & Xie, Yinxi, 2022. "Fiscal and monetary stabilization policy at the zero lower bound: Consequences of limited foresight," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 18-35.
    19. Flint Brayton & David L. Reifschneider, 2022. "LINVER: The Linear Version of FRB/US," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-053, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 2018. "Intrinsic expectations persistence: evidence from professional and household survey expectations," Working Papers 18-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    21. Christopher Gust & Edward Herbst & David López-Salido, 2022. "Short-Term Planning, Monetary Policy, and Macroeconomic Persistence," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 174-209, October.
    22. Edward Herbst, 2024. "Forecasting with DSGE models," Chapters, in: Michael P. Clements & Ana Beatriz Galvão (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Macroeconomic Forecasting, chapter 6, pages 126-155, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    23. Meyer-Gohde, Alexander, 2010. "Linear rational-expectations models with lagged expectations: A synthetic method," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 984-1002, May.
    24. Milani, Fabio, 2007. "Expectations, learning and macroeconomic persistence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 2065-2082, October.
    25. Edward Herbst & Frank Schorfheide, 2014. "Sequential Monte Carlo Sampling For Dsge Models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(7), pages 1073-1098, November.
    26. Stefano Eusepi & Bruce Preston, 2018. "Fiscal Foundations of Inflation: Imperfect Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2551-2589, September.
    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. Gust, Christopher & Herbst, Edward & López-Salido, David, 2025. "Optimal monetary policy with uncertain private sector foresight," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    2. Haochun Ma & Jordan Roulleau-Pasdeloup, 2025. "Clearing Up the Effective Lower Bound Morass," Papers 2511.04782, arXiv.org.

    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. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2023. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    2. Meggiorini, Greta, 2023. "Behavioral New Keynesian Models: An empirical assessment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Ina Hajdini, 2022. "Mis-specified Forecasts and Myopia in an Estimated New Keynesian Model," Working Papers 22-03R, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, revised 06 Mar 2023.
    4. Bianchi-Vimercati, Riccardo & Eichenbaum, Martin & Guerreiro, Joao, 2024. "Fiscal stimulus with imperfect expectations: Spending vs. tax policy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    5. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2020. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," BERG Working Paper Series 163, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    6. Gurrola Luna, Alejandro & McKnight, Stephen, 2026. "Bounded rationality and macroeconomic (in)stability," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    7. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2020. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," Working Papers 0686, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    8. Rychalovska, Yuliya & Slobodyan, Sergey & Wouters, Rafael, 2026. "Professional survey forecasts and expectations in DSGE models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    9. Andrade, Philippe & Gautier, Erwan & Mengus, Eric, 2023. "What matters in households’ inflation expectations?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 50-68.
    10. Rychalovska, Yuliya & Slobodyan, Sergey & Wouters, Raf, 2025. "Survey expectations, learning and inflation dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    11. Jean-Paul L’Huillier & Sanjay R Singh & Donghoon Yoo, 2024. "Incorporating Diagnostic Expectations into the New Keynesian Framework," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(5), pages 3013-3046.
    12. Lustenhouwer, Joep & Salle, Isabelle, 2025. "Learning to be rational in the presence of news: A lab investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    13. Han, Zhao, 2024. "Asymmetric information and misaligned inflation expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    14. Aktuğ, Emrehan & Rezghi, Abolfazl, 2025. "Asymmetric overreaction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    15. Candia, Bernardo & Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy, 2024. "The inflation expectations of U.S. firms: Evidence from a new survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(S).
    16. Meyer-Gohde, Alexander & Tzaawa-Krenzler, Mary, 2023. "Sticky information and the Taylor principle," IMFS Working Paper Series 189, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    17. Brzoza-Brzezina, Michał & Galiński, Paweł R. & Makarski, Krzysztof, 2025. "Monetary and fiscal policy in a two-country model with behavioral expectations," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    18. Stéphane Dupraz & Hervé Le Bihan & Julien Matheron, 2022. "Make-up Strategies with Finite Planning Horizons but Forward-Looking Asset Prices," Working papers 862, Banque de France.
    19. Richard K. Crump & Stefano Eusepi & Emanuel Moench & Bruce Preston, 2025. "How Do We Learn About the Long Run?," Staff Reports 1150, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    20. Benchimol, Jonathan & Bounader, Lahcen, 2023. "Optimal monetary policy under bounded rationality," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 67, pages 1-25.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E70 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    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:fip:fedgfe:2024-63. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.