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Briefing
What Survey Measures of Inflation Expectations Tell Us
Throughout this period of high inflation, people have wondered when inflation will return to the FOMC's longer-run target of 2 percent. Many models and surveys on inflation expectations exist to help answer this question. In this Economic Brief, we explore the accuracy of these measures of inflation expectations and what information can be obtained from them. While we find these popular sources of inflation are historically inaccurate, they can still gather valuable information, such as people's confidence in the ability of the Fed to get inflation back to target.
Journal Article
Understanding the New York Fed's Survey of Primary Dealers
The New York Fed?s Survey of Primary Dealers plays a key role in the Federal Reserve?s understanding of market expectations for monetary policy and the economy, providing timely and comprehensive dealer insight into a range of topics. In recent years, the survey has evolved to reflect the changing macroeconomic environment brought about by the financial crisis and by the Fed?s move into new policy tools aimed at adjusting the size and composition of its balance sheet and giving more explicit forward guidance on the path of short-term interest rates. This study offers an in-depth look at the ...
Mounting Signs Point to a Texas Economic Slowdown
The most recent jobs report showed state employment was flat in August. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1 percent (from 4.0 percent in July), and labor force and wage growth also eased.
Working Paper
Starting small and ending big -- the effect of monetary incentives on response rates in the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances: an observational experiment
In 2003, the Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF), conducted by the Federal Reserve Board, implemented the use of incentives to increase response rates. This study examines the effects of some of the characteristics of the implementation - such as level of effort, time in queue, and consecutively-increasing incentive amounts - on unit response. Our estimates suggest that as the number of days increase between the initial screener and main interview, the probability of completion decreases. Similarly, as the number of days increases between each consecutive incentive offer the probability ...
Working Paper
Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?
Surveys do! We examine the forecasting power of four alternative methods of forecasting U.S. inflation out-of-sample: time series ARIMA models; regressions using real activity measures motivated from the Phillips curve; term structure models that include linear, non-linear, and arbitrage-free specifications; and survey-based measures. We also investigate several methods of combining forecasts. Our results show that surveys outperform the other forecasting methods and that the term structure specifications perform relatively poorly. We find little evidence that combining forecasts produces ...
Journal Article
Improving survey measures of household inflation expectations
Expectations about future inflation are generally thought to play an important role in households' decisions about spending and saving. They are also of great interest to central bankers, who take them into account when determining policy or assessing the effectiveness of communications with the public. To help improve existing survey measures of inflation expectations, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently joined with other institutions and academic consultants to develop a set of survey questions that will yield more reliable information on households' inflation expectations, ...
Journal Article
President's Message: Learning From Our District
My Richmond Fed colleagues and I are on the ground in our district constantly, meeting and learning from community members. Last year, we had over 1,700 such engagements — with bankers, business and community leaders, workers, and public officials. These meetings take us to every corner of the states we serve.
Working Paper
Alternative methods of unit nonresponse weighting adjustments: an application from the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances
The 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF) screening interview had significant unit nonresponse and therefore some type of nonresponse adjustment was deemed necessary. The approach used in the 2003 survey differed from that used in previous surveys. The current paper examines the impact of this technique on weights, point estimates and variance of the estimates by comparing the approach ultimately implemented for the 2003 survey to alternative approaches. The results using the 2003 SSBF hybrid method are very similar to the traditional weighting class method and the propensity ...
Speech
Improving the measurement of inflation expectations
Remarks at the Barclays 16th Annual Global Inflation-Linked Conference, New York City.
Report
Rethinking the measurement of household inflation expectations: preliminary findings
This paper reports preliminary findings from a Federal Reserve Bank of New York research program aimed at improving survey measures of inflation expectations. We find that seemingly small differences in how inflation is referred to in a survey can lead respondents to consider significantly different price concepts. For near-term inflation, the "prices in general" question in the monthly Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers can elicit responses that focus on the most visible prices, such as gasoline or food. Questions on the "rate of inflation" can lead to responses on the ...