The Expected, Perceived, and Realized Inflation of U.S. Households before and during the COVID19 Pandemic

Michael Weber, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Olivier Coibion

No 16930, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: As the pandemic spread across the U.S., disagreement among U.S. households about inflation expectations surged along with the mean perceived and expected level of inflation. Simultaneously, the inflation experienced by households became more dispersed. Using matched micro data on spending of households and their macroeconomic expectations, we study the link between the inflation experienced by households in their daily shopping and their perceived and expected levels of inflation both before and during the pandemic. In normal times, realized inflation barely differs across observable dimensions but low income, low education, and Black households experienced a larger increase in realized inflation than other households did. Dispersion in realized and perceived inflation explains a large share of the rise in dispersion in inflation expectations.

Date: 2022-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16930 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The Expected, Perceived, and Realized Inflation of US Households Before and During the COVID19 Pandemic (2023)
Working Paper: The Expected, Perceived, and Realized Inflation of U.S. Households before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022)
Working Paper: The Expected, Perceived, and Realized Inflation of U.S. Households before and during the COVID19 Pandemic (2022)
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:cpr:ceprdp:16930

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16930

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().