It is recognised that the understanding and accurate forecasts of key macroeconomic variables are fundamental for the success of any economic policy. In the case of monetary policy, many efforts have been made towards understanding the relationship between past and expected values of inflation,...

Any measure of unobserved inflation uncertainty relies on specific assumptions which are most likely not fulfilled completely. This calls into question whether an individual measure delivers a reliable signal. To reduce idiosyncratic measurement error, we propose using common information...

Recent studies emphasize that survey-based inflation risk measures are informative about future inflation and thus useful for monetary authorities. However, these data are typically available at a quarterly frequency whereas monetary policy decisions require a more frequent monitoring of such...

This paper studies forecasts errors at the micro level using two alternative survey data sets. The main focus is on inflation and real GDP growth forecasts in the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. For comparison, inflation forecasts in the US Survey of Professional Forecasters are also...

This paper examines aggregated inflation expectations based on the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters (ECB SPF). We analyse possible impacts of changing panel composition on short and long term point forecasts and forecast uncertainties using approach, which is based on a set of sub-panels...

This paper considers popular methods for the quantification of survey expectations.We investigate the asymptotic properties of two variants of the probability approach originally suggested by Carlson and Parkin (1975). It is argued that the traditionalmethod can be interpreted as an instrumental...

This paper focuses on survey expectations and discusses their uses for testing and modeling of expectations. Alternative models of expectations formation are reviewed and the importance of allowing for heterogeneity of expectations is emphasized. A weak form of the rational expectations...

Any measure of unobserved inflation uncertainty relies on specific assumptions which are most likely not fulfilled completely. This calls into question whether an individual measure delivers a reliable signal. To reduce idiosyncratic measurement error, we propose using common information...

Macroeconomic expectations of various economic agents are characterized by substantial cross-sectional heterogeneity. In this paper, we focus on expectations heterogeneity among professional forecasters. We first present stylized facts and discuss theoretical explanations for heterogeneous...

The paper investigates the predictive power of a new survey implemented by the Federal Employment Agency (FEA) for forecasting German unemployment in the short run. Every month, the CEOs of the FEA's regional agencies are asked about their expectations of future labor market developments. We...