Based on a new survey of German households, we investigate the role that information channels and lifetime experience play in households' inflation expectations. We show that the types of information channels that households use to inform themselves about monetary policy are closely related to...

In a randomized experiment embedded in a survey, I test the effects of variations in question wording and format on consumer response behavior and the corresponding inflation expectations. To this end, survey participants from a representative sample of German consumers are broken down into four...

In this paper we analyze how consumers in Germany updated expectations about in aflation in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. We use a fixed effects model to estimate the effect of regional exposure to COVID-19 cases, the stringency of restriction measures and local unemployment rates on...

I investigate how households and firms adjust their inflation expectations when experiencing an increase in their energy prices. I use monthly panel survey data in combination with a difference-in-difference approach to show that households increase their inflation expectations when they...

Inflation expectations are often found to depend on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of households, such as age, income and education, however, the reasons for this systematic heterogeneity are not yet fully understood. Since accounting for these expectation differentials could help...

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...

Measuring economic uncertainty is crucial for understanding investment decisions by individuals and firms. Macroeconomists increasingly rely on survey data on subjective expectations. An innovative approach to measure aggregate uncertainty exploits the rounding patterns in individuals' responses...

This paper documents that individuals' expectations about macroeconomic outcomes are systematically linked with the experiences of these macroeconomic outcomes they have made during life. Focusing on expectations about national inflation, national unemployment and national business conditions, I...

We study first-order and higher-order inflation expectations of German households and firms elicited from surveys. The data allows to shed light on the relation between different orders of beliefs, and to derivate implications for noisy-information models with infinite regress. Moreover, since...

This paper documents a strong relationship between households’ perceptions about inflation over the past 12 months and households’ short- and long-term expectations about future inflation. This relationship is strong during periods of high-inflation but even stronger during low-inflation...