This study examines the unintended consequences of quality disclosures, focusing on how Academy Award nominations impact consumer satisfaction in the movie industry. Awards and certifications typically signal high quality and increase consumer expectations. Yet, if the experience falls short of...

We measure which economic topics are top of mind using quarterly German household and firm panels from 2020 to 2024, a period that spans the post-pandemic inflation surge and the subsequent disinflation. With these data, we study the determinants and consequences of having inflation top of mind....

This paper investigates the determinants of inflation target credibility (ITC) using a unique survey we designed to measure the credibility of the ECB's inflation target. Containing over 200,000 responses from German consumers collected between January 2019 and November 2024, our dataset enables...

This paper investigates the determinants of inflation target credibility (ITC) using a unique survey we designed to measure the credibility of the ECB's inflation target. Containing over 200,000 responses from German consumers collected between January 2019 and November 2024, our dataset enables...

This paper investigates the determinants of inflation target credibility (ITC) using a unique survey we designed to measure the credibility of the ECB's inflation target. Containing over 200,000 responses from German consumers collected between January 2019 and November 2024, our dataset enables...

This paper introduces a novel TV news index specifically designed to track coverage of rising inflation across major US TV channels: ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News. The index is generated daily and aggregated into a monthly measure. Using this index, we analyze the impact of TV news on inflation...

We examine how speeches by Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members, including regional Fed presidents, shape private sector expectations. Speeches that signal rising inflationary pressures prompt both households and professional forecasters to raise their inflation expectations, consistent...

The ifo Business Climate Index is one of the most important leading indicators for the German economy. It is based on a monthly survey of approximately 9,000 firms and reflects responses to two core questions: the assessment of the firms' current business situation and their expectations for the...

This paper studies how managers plan under uncertainty. In a new panel survey of German manufacturing firms, we observe both forecasts of sales growth and a quantitative measure of subjective uncertainty. We show that subjective uncertainty reflects change experienced by firms: it is high when...

In a novel survey, we study how German senior government officials systematically adjust fiscal policy in response to economic shocks, focusing on their fiscal responses to a contractionary monetary policy shock. Using randomized vignette treatments, we examine how officials update GDP and...

Economic narratives are pervasive in the public discourse and can shape individual behavior. But so far we know very little about whether households actually demand and value narratives as information. We combine a comprehensive expert survey with a large-scale nationally representative...

Economic narratives are pervasive in the public discourse and can shape individual behavior. But so far we know very little about whether households actually demand and value narratives as information. We combine a comprehensive expert survey with a large-scale nationally representative...

Economic narratives are pervasive in the public discourse and can shape individual behavior. But so far we know very little about whether households actually demand and value narratives as information. We combine a comprehensive expert survey with a large-scale nationally representative...

This paper leverages a novel survey among German senior government officials to investigate fiscal responses to monetary policy shocks. Using randomized vignette treatments, we present officials with scenarios of increased government interest costs and analyze their expected fiscal adjustments....

We provide evidence on narratives about the macroeconomy-the stories people tell to explain macroeconomic phenomena-in the context of a historic surge in inflation. In surveys with more than 10,000 US households and 100 academic experts, we measure economic narratives in open-ended survey...

This study examines the unintended consequences of quality disclosures, focusing on how Academy Award nominations impact consumer satisfaction in the movie industry. Awards, certifications, and nominations typically signal high quality and increase consumer expectations. Yet, if the experience...

In an online experiment with a representative US sample (N=12,960) we show that increasing the salience of an economic or cultural conflict without providing any news boosts disagreement on a range of political issues by 8-35%. The data support two key predictions of the Bonomi et al. (2021)...

We provide experimental evidence on how fiscal news shapes households' expectations and spending behavior. Using a new survey of ~11,000 Korean individuals linked to automatically collected high-frequency spending data, we elicit respondents' fiscal and macroeconomic beliefs and randomly provide...

Expectations are central to models of economic and financial decision-making. Yet in practice, individuals are often inattentive and, when asked, report fragile, context-dependent expectations that are only weakly linked to decisions. This raises the question to what extent they hold such...

We study economic narratives - causal accounts of observed events - in a high-stakes real-world context: long-term unemployment. We use open-ended questions to measure narratives about long-term unemployment in samples of Danish unemployed job seekers, firm managers, households from the general...

Expectations are central to models of economic and financial decision-making. Yet in practice, individuals are often inattentive and, when asked, report fragile, context-dependent expectations that are only weakly linked to decisions. This raises the question to what extent they hold such...

We study economic narratives - causal accounts of observed events - in a high-stakes real-world context: long-term unemployment. We use open-ended questions to measure narratives about long-term unemployment in samples of Danish unemployed job seekers, firm managers, households from the general...

Expectations are central to models of economic and financial decision-making. Yet in practice, individuals are often inattentive and, when asked, report fragile, context-dependent expectations that are only weakly linked to decisions. This raises the question to what extent they hold such...

This paper studies how lifetime inflation exposure shapes individuals' inflation expectations, perceptions, and financial behavior. Using a large individual-level dataset from Türkiye spanning 2014 to 2024, combined with detailed measures of past inflation experiences, we show that individuals...

We identify desirable/undesirable inflation outcomes under subjective beliefs by comparing surveybased and risk-adjusted distributions of inflation. Intuitively, investors dislike inflation at both extremes, preferring a range in the middle. This "good inflation" region, which investors...

Communication with the market to guide public expectations has become a pivotal monetary policy instrument for central banks worldwide. Therefore, assessing the efficacy of communication in influencing personal expectations is essential for central banks. To examine the effectiveness of...

We study economic narratives-causal accounts of observed events-in a high-stakes real-world context: long-term unemployment. We use open-ended questions to measure narratives about long-term unemployment in samples of Danish unemployed job seekers, firm managers, households from the general...

Expectations are central to models of economic and financial decision-making. Yet in practice, individuals are often inattentive and, when asked, report fragile, context-dependent expectations that are only weakly linked to decisions. This raises the question to what extent they hold such...

University dropout is costly, making it a policy priority to identify factors that predict dropout. Using a survey experiment with incoming first-year students linked to long-run administrative outcomes, we assess which information improves dropout prediction beyond standard university records....

We investigate the factors influencing the intended college major choices of high school students in Italy, ranking the relative importance of expected earnings, perceived ability, and major-specific tastes, that we measure directly using a Coller and Williams game. We find that major-specific...

Public support for policy interventions depends on citizens' beliefs about their likely effects. We examine how individuals form such beliefs by studying their predictions of experimental outcomes in a policy-relevant setting, and why their predictions differ from expert benchmarks. We elicit...

In a field experiment with 9,000 Danish job seekers, we study how unemployed workers' wage expectations affect job search and re-employment. In our survey, we generate exogenous variation in respondents' wage expectations by informing a random half of them about re-employment wages of comparable...

We study the determinants of US dollar demand across market participants and traded instruments using survey-based exchange rate and macroeconomic expectations. Leveraging granular foreign exchange trading data, we show that forward-looking expectations accurately predict both currency returns...

We measure which economic topics are top of mind using quarterly German household and firm panels from 2020 to 2024, a period that spans the post-pandemic inflation surge and the subsequent disinflation. With these data, we study the determinants and consequences of having inflation top of mind....