Search Results
Working Paper
The Effects of Interest Rate Increases on Consumers' Inflation Expectations: The Roles of Informedness and Compliance
We study how monetary policy communications associated with increasing the federal funds rate causally affect consumers' inflation expectations in real time. In a large-scale, multi-wave randomized controlled trial (RCT), we find weak evidence that communicating these policy changes lowers consumers' medium-term inflation expectations on average. However, information differs systematically across demographic groups, in terms of ex ante informedness about monetary policy and ex post compliance with the information treatment. Monetary policy communications have a much stronger effect on the ...
Working Paper
Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations: Theory and Evidence
Based on indirect utility theory, we introduce a novel methodology of measuring inflation expectations indirectly. This methodology starts at the individual level, asking consumers about the change in income required to buy the same amounts of goods and services one year ahead. Analytically, our methodology possesses smaller ex-post aggregate inflation forecast errors relative to forecasts based on conventional survey questions. We ask this question in a large-scale, high-frequency survey of consumers in the US and 14 countries, and we show that indirect consumer inflation expectations ...
Journal Article
A Real-Time Assessment of Inflation Nowcasting at the Cleveland Fed
Using a model based on staff research, the Cleveland Fed’s website provides daily nowcasts—or near-term predictions—of multiple US inflation measures for public use. In this Commentary, we compare the historical predictive accuracy of the model behind those inflation nowcasts with the accuracy of inflation nowcasts coming from competing sources: surveys of professional forecasters and alternative statistical models. We find that our inflation nowcasts have performed relatively well in these comparisons, both over a long sample and a short sample that focuses on the period since the ...
Journal Article
Consumer Inflation Expectations Across Surveys and over Time
Different survey-based measures of consumer inflation expectations have diverged in recent months. This Economic Commentary compares these measures and the survey questions underlying them. Our analysis suggests that the divergences across survey-based measures of inflation expectations can be attributed to various features and sample characteristics specific to each survey.
Working Paper
The Effects of Price Endings on Price Rigidity: Evidence from VAT Changes
We document a causal role for price endings in generating micro and macro price rigidity. Based on micro price data underlying the consumer price index in Israel, we document that most stores have a favored price ending?a final digit, usually a zero or nine, used by a majority of prices in that store?and that these favored price endings are utilized extensively. Using changes to the VAT rate as exogenous cost shocks that affect prices regardless of ending, we find that the frequency of price adjustment for nonfavored endings increases by twice as much as the frequency of adjustment for ...
Journal Article
Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics 2020 CEBRA Annual Meeting Session Summary
The Cleveland Fed’s Center for Inflation Research sponsored a session on inflation dynamics at the 2020 CEBRA annual meeting. The presentations focused on inflation expectations and firms’ price-setting behavior. This Economic Commentary summarizes the papers presented during the session.
Journal Article
On the Relationships between Wages, Prices, and Economic Activity
We take a closer look at the connections between wages, prices, and economic activity. We find that causal relationships between wages and prices are difficult to identify, and the ability of wages to help predict future inflation is limited. Wages appear to be useful in assessing the current state of labor markets, but they are not necessarily sufficient for thinking about where the economy and inflation are going.
Discussion Paper
How Businesses Set Prices—In Their Own Words
There has been a lot of interest in firms’ pricing decisions in the past few years—both during the inflation surge of 2021-23 and in the more recent rounds of tariff increases. In this post, we let firms speak for themselves about what factors they consider when adjusting prices in response to various shocks. The analysis is based on an ongoing research project, joint with the Atlanta and Cleveland Federal Reserve Banks, on how businesses set prices and the extent of passthrough of cost increases. In particular, we leverage the qualitative portion of the study based on open-ended ...
Journal Article
When Might the Federal Funds Rate Lift Off? Computing the Probabilities of Crossing Unemployment and Inflation Thresholds
The Federal Open Market Committee has been providing guidance to help markets anticipate when it will begin raising the federal funds rate target. The most recent guidance suggests that the target will not change at least until after an unemployment or infl ation threshold is breached. We use a forecasting model to estimate when these thresholds are likely to be breached. We also consider how an infl ation fl oor would affect the timing of liftoff.
Working Paper
Convenient prices and price rigidity: cross-sectional evidence
This paper provides cross-sectional evidence of convenient prices--prices that simplify and expedite transactions and thereby reduce the time costs from physically making a transaction. I propose that firms may wish to set convenient prices for items that: (1) are typically purchased with cash; (2) are sold alone or with a few similar items; and (3) are high-traffic transactions, i.e., require queuing or are purchased very frequently. I find broad support for the use of convenient prices in locations where making a rapid transaction is important. Convenience also appears to predominantly ...