IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/nzecpp/v57y2023i1p1-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do consumers actually monitor the inflation rate? Evidence from New Zealand

Author

Listed:
  • Bernd Hayo
  • Florian Neumeier

Abstract

In this note, we study whether consumers actually monitor the inflation rate, an assumption that is often made in studies on inflation perceptions and expectations as well as policy analyses. We analyse this question using unique representative survey data on New Zealand collected in 2016. In this case of an inflation targeting country and an environment of low inflation rate, we find that only about one third of the population says that it monitors the inflation rate. These are people characterised by a significantly higher degree of objective and subjective economic knowledge as well as interest in monetary issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernd Hayo & Florian Neumeier, 2023. "Do consumers actually monitor the inflation rate? Evidence from New Zealand," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 1-8, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:57:y:2023:i:1:p:1-8
    DOI: 10.1080/00779954.2021.2010235
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00779954.2021.2010235
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00779954.2021.2010235?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dräger, Lena & Lamla, Michael J., 2012. "Updating inflation expectations: Evidence from micro-data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 807-810.
    2. Saten Kumar & Hassan Afrouzi & Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Inflation Targeting Does Not Anchor Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Firms in New Zealand," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 46(2 (Fall)), pages 151-225.
    3. Bernd Hayo & Florian Neumeier, 2016. "Survey on New Zealanders’ Attitudes Towards and Knowledge of Macroeconomic Policy Issues: Documentation of Survey Methodology and Descriptive Results," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201630, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    4. Özer Karagedikli & C. John McDermott, 2018. "Inflation expectations and low inflation in New Zealand," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(3), pages 277-288, September.
    5. Michael Woodford, 2005. "Central bank communication and policy effectiveness," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 399-474.
    6. Michelle Lewis & C. John McDermott, 2016. "New Zealand's experience with changing its inflation target and the impact on inflation expectations," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 343-361, September.
    7. Andrew Caplin & Mark Dean, 2015. "Revealed Preference, Rational Inattention, and Costly Information Acquisition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(7), pages 2183-2203, July.
    8. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    9. Brian Silverstone, 2014. "Inflation Targeting in New Zealand: The 1987 Reserve Bank Questionnaire and Related Documents," Working Papers in Economics 14/11, University of Waikato.
    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. Bernd Hayo & Florian Neumeier, 2022. "Households’ inflation perceptions and expectations: survey evidence from New Zealand," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 185-217, February.
    2. Baeriswyl, Romain & Boun My, Kene & Cornand, Camille, 2021. "Double overreaction in beauty contests with information acquisition: Theory and experiment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 432-445.
    3. Weijie Zhong, 2018. "The Indirect Cost of Information," Papers 1809.00697, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    4. Philippe Jehiel & Jakub Steiner, 2020. "Selective Sampling with Information-Storage Constraints [On interim rationality, belief formation and learning in decision problems with bounded memory]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(630), pages 1753-1781.
    5. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2021_010 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Munday, Tim & Brookes, James, 2021. "Mark my words: the transmission of central bank communication to the general public via the print media," Bank of England working papers 944, Bank of England.
    7. Larionov, Daniil & Pham, Hien & Yamashita, Takuro & Zhu, Shuguang, 2021. "First Best Implementation with Costly Information Acquisition," TSE Working Papers 21-1261, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2022.
    8. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D., 2021. "Value computation and modulation: A neuroeconomic theory of self-control as constrained optimization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    9. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar & Jane Ryngaert, 2021. "Do You Know that I Know that You Know…? Higher-Order Beliefs in Survey Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1387-1446.
    10. Jacob LaRiviere & Mikolaj Czajkowski & Nick Hanley & Katherine Simpson, 2016. "What is the Causal Impact of Knowledge on Preferences in Stated Preference Studies?," Working Papers 2016-12, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    11. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    12. Andreas Hefti & Peiyao Shen & King King Li, 2021. "Igniting deliberation in high stake decisions: a field study," ECON - Working Papers 378, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    13. Larsen, Vegard H. & Thorsrud, Leif Anders & Zhulanova, Julia, 2021. "News-driven inflation expectations and information rigidities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 507-520.
    14. Tommaso Denti & Doron Ravid, 2023. "Robust Predictions in Games with Rational Inattention," Papers 2306.09964, arXiv.org.
    15. Stephen Morris & Ming Yang, 2016. "Coordination and the Relative Cost of Distinguishing Nearby States," Working Papers 079_2016, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Econometric Research Program..
    16. Kaplan, Greg & Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam, 2017. "Inflation at the household level," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 19-38.
    17. Camille Cornand & Frank Heinemann, 2008. "Optimal Degree of Public Information Dissemination," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 718-742, April.
    18. Valentino Dardanoni & Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti & Christopher J. Tyson, 2020. "Inferring Cognitive Heterogeneity From Aggregate Choices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 1269-1296, May.
    19. Deschamps, Bruno & Ioannidis, Christos & Ka, Kook, 2020. "High-frequency credit spread information and macroeconomic forecast revision," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 358-372.
    20. Katharina Momsen & Sebastian O. Schneider, 2022. "Motivated Reasoning, Information Avoidance, and Default Bias," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2022_03, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    21. Civelli, Andrea & Deck, Cary & Tutino, Antonella, 2022. "Attention and choices with multiple states and actions: A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 86-102.

    More about this item

    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:taf:nzecpp:v:57:y:2023:i:1:p:1-8. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RNZP20 .

    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.