An empirical assessment of the relationships among inflation and short- and long-term expectations

This paper uses a detailed literature review and an empirical analysis of three models to assess the links among inflation and survey measures of long- and short-term expectations. In the first approach, we jointly estimate a model of inflation, survey expectations and monetary policy, where each is a function of a common time-varying inflation trend. In the estimates, long-term expectations track closely the unobserved trend that is an important factor in inflation dynamics, implying that changes in long-run expectations can lead to persistent movements in inflation. In the second approach, we estimate a time-varying parameter VAR with stochastic volatility. This model relaxes the cross-equation and constant parameter restrictions from the first model. Impulse response analysis shows a relatively stable relationship between inflation and survey measures of inflation, although with some modest changes consistent with improved anchoring of long-term expectations. Finally, we rely on a conventional VAR framework incorporating several macroeconomic variables, including both short- and long-term measures of expected inflation. In these estimates, shocks to either measure of expectations lead to a rise in the other measure and some limited pass-through to inflation. Shocks to inflation cause both short- and long-term expectations to rise. Other factors such as monetary policy, economic activity, and food price inflation also affect expectations and inflation.