Search Results
Working Paper
Unit Cost Expectations and Uncertainty: Firms' Perspectives on Inflation
We propose a novel, survey-based measure of nominal marginal cost expectations held by business decision makers to track building inflationary pressures and augment the existing set of inflation expectations data policymakers frequently monitor. Unlike other surveys of firms or households that elicit "aggregate" expectations, we focus on idiosyncratic costs that firms are well-aware of and plan for, and which matter for price setting. We document five key findings. First, once aggregated, firms' unit cost realizations closely comove with US inflation statistics. Second, in aggregate, firms' ...
Working Paper
Unit Cost Expectations and Uncertainty: Firms' Perspectives on Inflation
We rely on the Atlanta Fed's Business Inflation Expectations survey to draw inference about firms' inflation perceptions, expectations, and uncertainty through the lens of firms' unit (marginal) costs. Using methods grounded in the survey literature, we find evidence that the concept of "aggregate inflation" as measured through price statistics like the consumer price index hold very little relevance for business decision makers. This lack of relevance manifests itself through experiments (including randomized controlled trials) that show how researchers word questions to elicit inflation ...