The Role of Media for Inflation Forecast Disagreement of Households and Professional Forecasters

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

This paper investigates the effects of media coverage about consumer price inflation on inflation forecast disagreement of German households and professional forecasters. We adopt a Bayesian learning model in which media coverage of inflation affects forecast disagreement by influencing information sets as well as predictor choice. Our empirical results show that disagreement of households depends on the heterogeneity of story content and on the reporting intensity, especially of news on rising inflation. Disagreement of professional forecasters does not depend on media coverage. With respect to the influence of macroeconomic variables, we provide evidence that disagreement of professional forecasters primarily depends on the inflation rate and on inflation volatility. The response of households to inflation is much less pronounced.

OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftJournal of Money, Credit and Banking
Jahrgang44
Ausgabenummer7
Seiten (von - bis)1325-1350
Anzahl der Seiten26
ISSN0022-2879
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.10.2012
Extern publiziertJa

DOI