Inflation Perceptions and Anticipations in the Old Eurozone Member States (original) (raw)

Inflation Perception and Anticipation Gaps in the Eurozone

There is significant empirical evidence that the introduction of the euro led to a significant increase of perceived inflation in most countries. Such an increase and persistence in the perceived inflation might then have an impact on inflation expectations and other macroeconomic variables. The authors have used the short-term Phillips curve to describe the difference between inflation expectations and its current values, subsequently to identify the impact of this difference on other economic indicators. The paper is structured as follows: Section 1 provides an overview of the theory and empiricism on the gap between measured and perceived inflation. Section 2 then builds up the theoretical framework based on the short-term Phillips curve approach and derives two hypotheses, to be tested subsequently. Section 3 provides the methodology. Section 4 presents the modelling and results of the empirical analysis. In section 5 authors compare its results and used methodology with papers ...

Euro Area Inflation Expectations

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

This study explores the recent dynamics of inflation expectations for the main euro area countries. It uses daily financial data for the main euro area countries over the past 15 years with a wide range of time horizons. The estimation of a model of the term structure of inflation expectations using these data allows the common part to be separated from the countryspecific part. It is found that, for the various time horizons and countries, the bulk of expected inflation is common to the whole euro area. The weight of country-specific factors is low, being most significant for the shorter term. For time horizons between five and ten years, the estimated inflation expectations showed a downward trend from 2012, which has reversed in the last two years owing to the application of a broad set of unconventional monetary policy measures in the euro area since mid-2014. Still, in the past year, medium-term inflation expectations have held below 2%, around 1.7% on average, clearly lower than in the period before the economic crisis.

Inflation (mis)perceptions in the euro area

Empirical Economics, 2009

There has been a growing interest on inflation perceptions in the euro area, in particular, following the euro cash changeover. It has been pointed out that a gap emerged between observed and perceived inflation since the introduction of the euro notes and coins. Such a statement relies on the fact that inflation perceptions, measured by the well-known balance statistic from the European Commission's consumer survey, hiked after January 2002 and remained high thereafter, as opposed to the observed inflation, which has remained fairly stable. In this paper, we discuss the issue of inflation perceptions measurement, by comparing the balance statistic with an alternative refined measure, which is computed using the probability method. We argue that the balance statistic should be used carefully, as it can induce to misleading conclusions. In fact, we provide, for both euro area and country level, evidence showing that, using the proposed alternative measure, the breakdown in the relationship between observed and perceived inflation did not occur at the time of the euro cash changeover.

Inflation expectations and inflation uncertainty in the eurozone: evidence from survey data

Review of World Economics, 2008

This paper uses the European Commission's Consumer Survey to assess whether inflation expectations have converged and whether inflation uncertainty has diminished following the introduction of the Euro in Europe. Consumers' responses to the survey suggest that inflation expectations depend more on past national inflation rates than on the ECB's anchor for price stability. The convergence in inflation expectations does not appear to be faster than the convergence in actual inflation rates. Regarding inflation uncertainty, the data indicate a relationship with country size, suggesting that within EMU, inflation uncertainty may increase in countries that have a smaller influence on ECB policy.

The anchoring of European inflation expectations

This paper analyses the usefulness of direct measures of consumers’ perceptions and expectations of inflation for monetary policy and investigates the degree to which these variables are anchored. We inter alia seek to xplore whether there is a difference in reaction of consumers in countries with more credible central banks and those from countries with less credible central banks. We moreover investigate whether the introduction of euro coins and banknotes in 2002, that can be interpreted as a structural shock, has significantly affected the inflation rate as perceived by consumers. We find that European inflation expectations are relatively robust to sudden changes in inflation or monetary policy surprises, regardless of the credibility of the central bank. The introduction of the euro, however, significantly affected the inflation perception of European consumers.

Inflation Expectations and Their Role in Eurosystem Forecasting

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

This paper summarises the findings of the Eurosystem’s Expert Group on Inflation Expectations (EGIE), which was one of the 13 work streams conducting analysis that fed into the ECB’s monetary policy strategy review. The EGIE was tasked with (i) reviewing the nature and behaviour of inflation expectations, with a focus on the degree of anchoring, and (ii) exploring the role that measures of expectations can play in forecasting inflation. While it is households’ and firms’ inflation expectations that ultimately matter in the expectations channel, data limitations have meant that in practice the focus of analysis has been on surveys of professional forecasters and on market-based indicators. Regarding the anchoring of inflation expectations, this paper considers a number of metrics: the level of inflation expectations, the responsiveness of longer-term inflation expectations to shorter-term developments, and the degree of uncertainty. Different metrics can provide conflicting signals about the scale and timing of potential unanchoring, which underscores the importance of considering all of them. Overall, however, these metrics suggest that in the period since the global financial and European debt crises, longer-term inflation expectations in the euro area have become less well anchored. Regarding the role measures of inflation expectations can play in forecasting inflation, this paper finds that they are indicative for future inflationary developments. When it comes to their predictive power, both market-based and survey-based measures are found to be more accurate than statistical benchmarks, but do not systematically outperform each other. Beyond their role as standalone forecasts, inflation expectations bring forecast gains when included in forecasting models and can also inform scenario and risk analysis in projection exercises performed using structural models. ...

Inflation and inflation uncertainty in the euro area

Empirical Economics, 2012

This paper estimates a time-varying AR-GARCH model of inflation producing measures of inflation uncertainty for the euro area, and investigates the linkages between them in a VAR framework, also allowing for the possible impact of the policy regime change associated with the start of EMU in 1999. The main findings are as follows. Steady-state inflation and inflation uncertainty have declined steadily since the inception of EMU, whilst short-run uncertainty has increased, mainly owing to exogenous shocks. A sequential dummy procedure provides further evidence of a structural break coinciding with the introduction of the euro and resulting in lower long-run uncertainty. It also appears that the direction of causality has been reversed, and that in the euro period the Friedman-Ball link is empirically supported, implying that the ECB can achieve lower inflation uncertainty by lowering the inflation rate.

The Euro and inflation uncertainty in the European Monetary Union

Journal of International Money and Finance, 2009

This paper investigates the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in twelve EMU countries. A time-varying GARCH model is estimated to distinguish between short-run and steady-state inflation uncertainty. The effects of the introduction of the Euro in 1999 are then examined introducing a dummy variable. Overall, it appears that post-1999 steady-state inflation has generally remained stable, steady-state inflation uncertainty and inflation persistence have both increased, and the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty has broken down in many countries. When the break dates are determined endogenously, the adjustment is found to have taken place before the introduction of the Euro.