Anchored Inflation Expectations: What Recent Data Reveal
Olena Kostyshyna,
Isabelle Salle and
Hung Truong
Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada
Abstract:
We analyze micro-level data from the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations through the lens of a heterogeneous-expectations model to study the state-dependent risk of inflation expectations unanchoring in low- and high-inflation environments. In our model, agents are either trend-chasing or mean-reverting forecasters of inflation. We interpret the degree of mean reversion in inflation expectations as a measure of anchoring, which varies over time with the share of agents using each approach. We find that during the post-pandemic inflation spike, trend-chasing expectations surged, resulting in a heightened risk of unanchoring expectations and entrenching above-target inflation. Furthermore, forming trend-chasing inflation expectations is associated with higher expectations for other key economic variables — such as interest rates, wages, and house prices — and a restraint in household spending. We provide additional new insights into household expectation formation, documenting that forecasting behaviors, attention, and noise in beliefs vary across socio-demographic groups and correlate with views about monetary policy.
Keywords: Inflation; and; prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D84 E31 E70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.34989/swp-2025-5 Full text (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bca:bocawp:25-5
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada 234 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G9, Canada. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().