What Is Driving the Recent Rise in Consumer Inflation Expectations?

Olivier Armantier, Giorgio Topa, Wilbert van der Klaauw and Basit Zafar

No 20110418, Liberty Street Economics from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers (the “Michigan Survey” hereafter) is the main source of information regarding consumers’ expectations of future inflation in the United States. The most recent release of the Michigan Survey on March 25 drew considerable attention because it showed a large spike in year-ahead expectations for inflation: as shown in the chart below, the median rose from 3.4 to 4.6 percent and the other quartiles of responses showed similar increases. What may have caused this rise in inflation expectations and what lessons should be taken from it? In this post, we draw upon the findings of an ongoing New York Fed research project to shed some light on the possible sources of the recent increase and to gauge its significance. While our research spans both short- and medium-term inflation expectations, this blog post discusses movements in short-term measures only and does not discuss medium-term expectations.

Keywords: Inflation expectations; Michigan Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mon
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