When Bad News Breeds Bias: Cross-country Evidence on Inflation-as-a-Bad and Overreaction in Inflation Expectations

Utilizing a very large household-level dataset of inflation expectations for twelve euro-area economies, we attempt to assess the formation and accuracy of inflation expectations following major disruptions of the macroeconomy which we identify during the period from 2004:1 to 2025:02. We find that these adverse events tend to increase the degree of inaccuracy in inflation expectations. We also find that this happens because inflation expectations tend to go up in response to these shocks relative to the 12-month ahead inflation realizations, which offers direct evidence of overestimation of inflation. This is consistent with overreaction of inflation expectations in response to inflationary news and with inflation-as-a-bad behavioral patterns in response to adverse non-inflationary shocks. We infer that such behavioral biases appear to have played an important role in the formation of inflation expectations in the euro-area following adverse shocks during the past two decades.