How income expectations adjust to inflation : a consumers' expectations-revealed pass-through

We use inflation and income growth expectations from the ECB Consumer Expectations Survey to measure the subjective expected pass-through of inflation to income in the main euro area countries. By aggregating consumers' responses to probabilistic questions, we obtain significantly higher estimates of the pass-through than those obtained from micro data. Our methodology allows one to examine how the pass-through varies along the probability distribution of expected inflation, which turns out to be particularly large for moderate inflation expectations. We find significant heterogeneity in the inflation pass-through across countries, ages and income groups, consistent with different wage and pension indexation regimes.