IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15388.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The formation of inflation expectations: an empirical analysis for the UK

Author

Listed:
  • David G. Blanchflower
  • Conall MacCoille

Abstract

This paper uses micro-data from three surveys for the UK to consider how individuals form inflation expectations. Generally, we find significant non-response bias in all surveys, with non-respondents especially likely to be young, female, less educated and with lower incomes. A number of demographic generalizations can be made based on the surveys. Inflation expectations rise with age, but the more highly educated and home owners tend to have lower inflation expectations. These groups are also more likely to be accurate in their estimates of official inflation twelve months ahead, and have less backward-looking expectations.

Suggested Citation

  • David G. Blanchflower & Conall MacCoille, 2009. "The formation of inflation expectations: an empirical analysis for the UK," NBER Working Papers 15388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15388
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15388.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2004. "Well-being over time in Britain and the USA," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1359-1386, July.
    2. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis & Justin Wolfers, 2004. "Disagreement about Inflation Expectations," NBER Chapters,in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003, Volume 18, pages 209-270 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Gerard O'Reilly & Karl Whelan, 2005. "Has Euro-Area Inflation Persistence Changed Over Time?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(4), pages 709-720, November.
    4. Gurkaynak, Refet S. & Sack, Brian T. & Swanson, Eric P., 2007. "Market-Based Measures of Monetary Policy Expectations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 201-212, April.
    5. William A. Branch, 2004. "The Theory of Rationally Heterogeneous Expectations: Evidence from Survey Data on Inflation Expectations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 592-621, July.
    6. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Brian Sack & Eric Swanson, 2005. "The Sensitivity of Long-Term Interest Rates to Economic News: Evidence and Implications for Macroeconomic Models," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 425-436, March.
    7. Gramlich, Edward M, 1983. "Models of Inflation Expectations Formation: A Comparison of Household and Economist Forecasts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 15(2), pages 155-173, May.
    8. Keane, Michael P & Runkle, David E, 1990. "Testing the Rationality of Price Forecasts: New Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 714-735, September.
    9. William A. Brock & Cars H. Hommes, 1997. "A Rational Route to Randomness," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1059-1096, September.
    10. Hasan Bakhshi & Anthony Yates, 1998. "Are UK inflation expectations rational?," Bank of England working papers 81, Bank of England.
    11. Mitchell, James & Weale, Martin R., 2007. "The rationality and reliability of expectations reported by British households: micro evidence from the British household panel survey," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2007,19, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    12. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    13. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Brian P. Sack & Eric T. Swanson, 2003. "The excess sensitivity of long-term interest rates: evidence and implications for macroeconomic models," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
    14. Christopher D. Carroll, 2003. "Macroeconomic Expectations of Households and Professional Forecasters," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(1), pages 269-298.
    15. Souleles, Nicholas S, 2004. "Expectations, Heterogeneous Forecast Errors, and Consumption: Micro Evidence from the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Surveys," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 39-72, February.
    16. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2007. "Inflation Dynamics," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(3), pages 317-334, December.
    17. Emiliano Santoro & Damjan Pfajfar, 2006. "Heterogeneity and learning in inflation expectation formation: an empirical assessment," Department of Economics Working Papers 0607, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    18. Paquet, Alain, 1992. "Inflationary expectations and rationality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 303-308, November.
    19. Pfajfar, D. & Santoro, E., 2008. "Asymmetries in Inflation Expectation Formation Across Demographic Groups," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0824, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    20. Andrew T. Levin & Fabio M. Natalucci & Jeremy M. Piger, 2004. "The macroeconomic effects of inflation targeting," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jul, pages 51-80.
    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. Easaw, Joshy & Golinelli, Roberto & Malgarini, Marco, 2013. "What determines households inflation expectations? Theory and evidence from a household survey," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-13.
    2. Patrick A. Imam, 2015. "Shock from Graying: Is the Demographic Shift Weakening Monetary Policy Effectiveness," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(2), pages 138-154, March.
    3. repec:wsi:serxxx:v:62:y:2017:i:04:n:s0217590817400306 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. David-Jan Jansen & Matthias Neuenkirch, 2017. "News Consumption, Political Preferences, and Accurate Views on Inflation," Research Papers in Economics 2017-03, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    5. Bruine de Bruin, Wändi & van der Klaauw, Wilbert & Topa, Giorgio, 2011. "Expectations of inflation: The biasing effect of thoughts about specific prices," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 834-845.
    6. Michael Debabrata Patra & Partha Ray, 2010. "Inflation Expectations and Monetary Policy in India; An Empirical Exploration," IMF Working Papers 10/84, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Ehrmann, Michael & Soudan, Michel & Stracca, Livio, 2012. "Explaining EU Citizens' Trust in the ECB in Normal and Crisis Times," Economics Series 289, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    8. Menz, Jan-Oliver & Poppitz, Philipp, 2013. "Households' disagreement on inflation expectations and socioeconomic media exposure in Germany," Discussion Papers 27/2013, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    9. Ueno, Yuko, 2014. "Updating Behavior of Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Japanese Household Panel Data," CIS Discussion paper series 617, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    10. Gilberto Tadeu Lima & Mark Setterfield & Jaylson Jair da Silveira, 2014. "Inflation Targeting and Macroeconomic Stability with Heterogeneous Inflation Expectations," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 255-279, December.
    11. Yasutomo Murasawa, 2013. "Measuring Inflation Expectations Using Interval-Coded Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(4), pages 602-623, August.
    12. Lena Dräger & Ulrich Fritsche, 2013. "Don't Worry, Be Right! Survey Wording Effects on In flation Perceptions and Expectations," Macroeconomics and Finance Series 201308, University of Hamburg, Department of Socioeconomics.
    13. Simon Richards & Matthieu Verstraete, 2016. "Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," Staff Working Papers 16-7, Bank of Canada.
    14. Alberto Cavallo & Guillermo Cruces & Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2017. "Inflation Expectations, Learning, and Supermarket Prices: Evidence from Survey Experiments," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 1-35, July.
    15. Murasawa, Yasutomo, 2017. "Measuring the Distributions of Public Inflation Perceptions and Expectations in the UK," MPRA Paper 76244, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Georganas, Sotiris & Healy, Paul J. & Li, Nan, 2014. "Frequency bias in consumers׳ perceptions of inflation: An experimental study," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 144-158.
    17. Jaylson Jair da Silveira & Gilberto Tadeu Lima, 2014. "Heterogeneity in Inflation Expectations and Macroeconomic Stability under Satisficing Learning," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2014_28, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    18. Simon Richards & Matthieu Verstraete, 2016. "Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 6090, CESifo Group Munich.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    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:nbr:nberwo:15388. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.