IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v13y1999i4p125-144.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Survey Measures of Expected U.S. Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Lloyd B. Thomas

Abstract

The forecasting performance of widely accessible surveys of expected inflation are evaluated against naive and financial market benchmark forecasts. In the period of rising inflation (1960-80), the Michigan household consensus forecasts exhibited smaller errors than the Livingston Survey of economists and the benchmark forecasts. Unlike Livingston, the Michigan forecasts were unbiased. Since 1980, Livingston forecasts have been more accurate than Michigan, though unbiasedness is rejected in both cases. SPF forecasts, available since 1981, have been slightly superior to Livingston. In forecasting inflation, respondents generally failed to take account of cyclical conditions, and strong-form rationality is not supported.

Suggested Citation

  • Lloyd B. Thomas, 1999. "Survey Measures of Expected U.S. Inflation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 125-144, Fall.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:13:y:1999:i:4:p:125-144
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.13.4.125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.13.4.125
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lovell, Michael C, 1986. "Tests of the Rational Expectations Hypothesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 110-124, March.
    2. Hafer, R W & Hein, Scott E, 1985. "On the Accuracy of Time-Series, Interest Rate, and Survey Forecasts of Inflation," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4), pages 377-398, October.
    3. Tilman Ehrbeck & Robert Waldmann, 1996. "Why Are Professional Forecasters Biased? Agency versus Behavioral Explanations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 21-40.
    4. Menil, George & Bhalla, Surjit S, 1975. "Direct Measurement of Popular Price Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(11), pages 169-180, March.
    5. Fama, Eugene F, 1975. "Short-Term Interest Rates as Predictors of Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 269-282, June.
    6. Dean Croushore, 1996. "Inflation forecasts: how good are they?," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue May, pages 15-25.
    7. Gramlich, Edward M, 1983. "Models of Inflation Expectations Formation: A Comparison of Household and Economist Forecasts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 15(2), pages 155-173, May.
    8. Rich, Robert W, 1989. "Testing the Rationality of Inflation Forecasts from Survey Data: Another Look at the SRC Expected Price Change Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(4), pages 682-686, November.
    9. Herbert E. Taylor, 1992. "The Livingston Surveys: a history of hopes and fears," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Jan, pages 15-27.
    10. David Laster & Paul Bennett & In Sun Geoum, 1999. "Rational Bias in Macroeconomic Forecasts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 293-318.
    11. Dean Croushore, 1997. "The Livingston Survey: still useful after all these years," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Mar, pages 15-27.
    12. Fama, Eugene F. & Gibbons, Michael R., 1984. "A comparison of inflation forecasts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 327-348, May.
    13. John A. Carlson, 1977. "A Study of Price Forecasts," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 6, number 1, pages 27-56, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grant, Alan P. & Thomas, Lloyd B., 2001. "Supply shocks and the rationality of inflation forecasts," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 515-532.
    2. Ball, Laurence & Croushore, Dean, 2003. "Expectations and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(4), pages 473-484, August.
    3. Silva Lopes, Artur, 1994. "A "hipótese das expectativas racionais": teoria e realidade (uma visita guiada à literatura até 1992) [The "rational expectations hypothesis": theory and reality (a guided tour ," MPRA Paper 9699, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2008.
    4. David C. Leonard & Michael E. Solt, 1986. "Recent Evidence On The Accuracy And Rationality Of Popular Inflation Forecasts," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 9(4), pages 281-290, December.
    5. Jordi Pons-Novell, 2003. "Strategic bias, herding behaviour and economic forecasts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 67-77.
    6. Dean Croushore, 1997. "The Livingston Survey: still useful after all these years," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Mar, pages 15-27.
    7. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert & Wei, Min, 2007. "Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1163-1212, May.
    8. Rik Hafer & Scott E. Hein, 1986. "Federal government debt and inflation: evidence from Granger causality tests," Working Papers 1986-003, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    9. Michael P. Keane & David E. Runkle, 1989. "Are economic forecasts rational?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 13(Spr), pages 26-33.
    10. Olivier Armantier & Wändi Bruine de Bruin & Giorgio Topa & Wilbert van der Klaauw & Basit Zafar, 2015. "Inflation Expectations And Behavior: Do Survey Respondents Act On Their Beliefs?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(2), pages 505-536, May.
    11. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "The strategy of professional forecasting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 441-466, August.
    12. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2020. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," Working Papers 0686, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    13. Grant, Alan P. & Thomas, Lloyd B., 1999. "Inflationary expectations and rationality revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 331-338, March.
    14. Atsushi Inoue & Lutz Kilian & Fatma Burcu Kiraz, 2009. "Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? Household Expectations of Inflation Based on Micro Consumption Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(7), pages 1331-1363, October.
    15. Duffy, David & Lunn, Peter D., 2009. "The Misperception of Inflation by Irish Consumers," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 40(2), pages 139-163.
    16. El-Shagi, Makram, 2011. "Inflation expectations: Does the market beat econometric forecasts?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 298-319.
    17. Kim, Insu & Kim, Minsoo, 2009. "Irrational Bias in Inflation Forecasts," MPRA Paper 16447, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Elizabeth Yobaccio & Jack H. Rubens & David C. Ketcham, 1995. "The Inflation-Hedging Properties of Risk Assets: The Case of REITs," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 10(3), pages 279-296.
    19. Keith K.W. Chan & Toan M. Pham, 1990. "Models of Inflation Forecasts: Some Australian Evidence," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 15(1), pages 89-105, June.
    20. da Silva Filho, Tito Nícias Teixeira, 2005. "Is there too much certainty when measuring uncertainty," MPRA Paper 16383, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:13:y:1999:i:4:p:125-144. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.