IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/2025s-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation, Attention and Expectations

Author

Listed:
  • Etienne Briand
  • Massimiliano Marcellino
  • Dalibor Stevanovic

Abstract

We investigate the role of attention in shaping inflation dynamics. To measure the general public attention, we utilize Google Trends (GT) data for keywords such as "inflation." For professional attention, we construct an indicator based on the standardized count of Wall Street Journal (WSJ) articles with "inflation" in their titles. Through empirical analysis, we show that attention significantly impacts inflation dynamics, even when accounting for traditional inflation-related factors. Macroeconomic theory suggests that expectations formation is a natural mechanism to explain these findings. We find support for this hypothesis by measuring a decrease in professional forecasters’ information rigidity during periods of high attention. In contrast to prior research, our findings highlight the critical roles of media communication and public attention in shaping aggregate inflation expectations. We then develop a theoretical model that captures our stylized facts, showing that both inflation dynamics and forecaster expectations are regime-dependent. Finally, we examine the implications of this framework for the effectiveness of monetary policy. Nous étudions le rôle de l'attention dans la dynamique de l'inflation. Pour mesurer l'attention du grand public, nous utilisons les données de Google Trends (GT) pour des mots clés tels que « inflation ». Pour l'attention des professionnels, nous construisons un indicateur basé sur le nombre standardisé d'articles du Wall Street Journal (WSJ) contenant le mot « inflation » dans leur titre. Grâce à une analyse empirique, nous montrons que l'attention a un impact significatif sur la dynamique de l'inflation, même lorsque l'on tient compte des facteurs traditionnels liés à l'inflation. La théorie macroéconomique suggère que la formation des anticipations est un mécanisme naturel pour expliquer ces résultats. Nous confirmons cette hypothèse en mesurant une diminution de la rigidité de l'information des prévisionnistes professionnels pendant les périodes de forte attention. Contrairement aux recherches antérieures, nos résultats mettent en évidence le rôle essentiel de la communication médiatique et de l'attention du public dans la formation des attentes globales en matière d'inflation. Nous développons ensuite un modèle théorique qui rend compte de nos faits caractérisés, en montrant que la dynamique de l'inflation et les anticipations des prévisionnistes dépendent du régime. Enfin, nous examinons les implications de ce cadre pour l'efficacité de la politique monétaire.

Suggested Citation

  • Etienne Briand & Massimiliano Marcellino & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2025. "Inflation, Attention and Expectations," CIRANO Working Papers 2025s-01, CIRANO.
  • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2025s-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2025s-01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar, 2018. "How Do Firms Form Their Expectations? New Survey Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2671-2713, September.
    2. Michael W. McCracken & Serena Ng, 2016. "FRED-MD: A Monthly Database for Macroeconomic Research," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 574-589, October.
    3. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    4. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Yueran Ma & Andrei Shleifer, 2020. "Overreaction in Macroeconomic Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2748-2782, September.
    5. D’Amuri, Francesco & Marcucci, Juri, 2017. "The predictive power of Google searches in forecasting US unemployment," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 801-816.
    6. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.
    7. Gardner, Ben & Scotti, Chiara & Vega, Clara, 2022. "Words speak as loudly as actions: Central bank communication and the response of equity prices to macroeconomic announcements," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 387-409.
    8. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "High-Frequency Identification of Monetary Non-Neutrality: The Information Effect," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1283-1330.
    9. Ryan Chahrour & Kristoffer Nimark & Stefan Pitschner, 2021. "Sectoral Media Focus and Aggregate Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(12), pages 3872-3922, December.
    10. Kristoffer Nimark, 2007. "Dynamic higher order expectations," Economics Working Papers 1118, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Mar 2011.
    11. Mark Gertler & Peter Karadi, 2015. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 44-76, January.
    12. Koop, Gary & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Potter, Simon M., 1996. "Impulse response analysis in nonlinear multivariate models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 119-147, September.
    13. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Rupal Kamdar, 2018. "The Formation of Expectations, Inflation, and the Phillips Curve," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1447-1491, December.
    14. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    15. Christopher D. Carroll, 2003. "Macroeconomic Expectations of Households and Professional Forecasters," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 269-298.
    16. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Michael Weber, 2022. "Monetary Policy Communications and Their Effects on Household Inflation Expectations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(6), pages 1537-1584.
    17. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Information Rigidity and the Expectations Formation Process: A Simple Framework and New Facts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2644-2678, August.
    18. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2012. "Credit Spreads and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1692-1720, June.
    19. White, Halbert & Kim, Tae-Hwan & Manganelli, Simone, 2015. "VAR for VaR: Measuring tail dependence using multivariate regression quantiles," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 187(1), pages 169-188.
    20. Angelico, Cristina & Marcucci, Juri & Miccoli, Marcello & Quarta, Filippo, 2022. "Can we measure inflation expectations using Twitter?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 259-277.
    21. Barsky, Robert B. & Sims, Eric R., 2011. "News shocks and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 273-289.
    22. Alexander Jung & Patrick Kuehl, 2021. "Can central bank communication help to stabilise inflation expectations?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(3), pages 298-321, July.
    23. Alexandre N. Kohlhas & Ansgar Walther, 2021. "Asymmetric Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(9), pages 2879-2925, September.
    24. Chauvet, Marcelle & Gabriel, Stuart & Lutz, Chandler, 2016. "Mortgage default risk: New evidence from internet search queries," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 91-111.
    25. Stock J.H. & Watson M.W., 2002. "Forecasting Using Principal Components From a Large Number of Predictors," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 97, pages 1167-1179, December.
    26. Anat Bracha & Jenny Tang, 2022. "Inflation Levels and (In)Attention," Working Papers 22-4, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    27. Carola Binder & Rupal Kamdar, 2022. "Expected and Realized Inflation in Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 131-156, Summer.
    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. Etienne Briand & Massimiliano Marcellino & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2024. "Inflation, Attention and Expectations," Working Papers 24-05, Chair in macroeconomics and forecasting, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management, revised Dec 2024.
    2. Massimiliano Marcellino & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2022. "The demand and supply of information about inflation," Working Papers 22-06, Chair in macroeconomics and forecasting, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management, revised Nov 2022.
    3. Han, Zhao, 2024. "Asymmetric information and misaligned inflation expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    4. Andrade, Philippe & Gautier, Erwan & Mengus, Eric, 2023. "What matters in households’ inflation expectations?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 50-68.
    5. Chee-Hong Law & Kim Huat Goh, 2024. "A systematic literature review of the implications of media on inflation expectations," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 311-340, May.
    6. Esady, Vania, 2022. "Real and nominal effects of monetary shocks under time-varying disagreement," Bank of England working papers 1007, Bank of England.
    7. 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.
    8. Francesco D'Acunto & Daniel Hoang & Maritta Paloviita & Michael Weber, 2019. "Human Frictions to the Transmission of Economic Policy," 2019 Meeting Papers 339, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Zidong An & Salem Abo‐Zaid & Xuguang Simon Sheng, 2023. "Inattention and the impact of monetary policy," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 623-643, June.
    10. Ángelo Gutiérrez-Daza, 2024. "Business Cycles when Consumers Learn by Shopping," Working Papers 2024-12, Banco de México.
    11. Zhao Han & Xiaohan Ma & Ruoyun Mao, 2023. "The Role of Dispersed Information in Inflation and Inflation Expectations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 48, pages 72-106, April.
    12. 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.
    13. Frache, Serafin & Lluberas, Rodrigo & Turen, Javier, 2024. "Belief-dependent pricing decisions," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    14. Zohar, Osnat, 2024. "Cyclicality of uncertainty and disagreement," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    15. Born, Benjamin & Enders, Zeno & Menkhoff, Manuel & Müller, Gernot & Niemann, Knut, 2022. "Firm Expectations and News: Micro v Macro," CEPR Discussion Papers 17768, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Candia, Bernardo & Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy, 2024. "The inflation expectations of U.S. firms: Evidence from a new survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(S).
    17. J. Daniel Aromí & Martín Llada, 2024. "Are professional forecasters inattentive to public discussions? The case of inflation in Argentina," Working Papers 300, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    18. Gómez-Cram, Roberto & Grotteria, Marco, 2022. "Real-time price discovery via verbal communication: Method and application to Fedspeak," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 993-1025.
    19. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    20. Kryvtsov, Oleksiy & Petersen, Luba, 2021. "Central bank communication that works: Lessons from lab experiments," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 760-780.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation; Expectations; Monetary policy; Google trends; Text analysis; Inflation; Attentes; Politique monétaire; Google trends; Analyse de texte;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:cir:cirwor:2025s-01. 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: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.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.