Authors: Daniel J. Lewis, Christos Makridis, and Karel Mertens
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Staff Reports
Do Monetary Policy Announcements Shift Household Expectations?
Number 897
September 2019 Revised January 2020
September 2019 Revised January 2020
JEL classification: E30, E40, E50
We use a decade of daily survey data from Gallup to study how monetary policy influences households’ beliefs about economic conditions. We first document that public confidence in the state of the economy reacts instantaneously to certain types of macroeconomic news. Next, we show that surprises to the federal funds target rate are among the news that have statistically significant and instantaneous effects on economic confidence. Specifically, we find that a surprise increase in the target rate robustly leads to an immediate decline in household confidence, at odds with previous findings that suggest consumers are largely inattentive to economic developments. Monetary policy news about forward guidance and asset purchases does not have similarly clear and robust immediate effects on household beliefs. We document heterogeneity across demographics in the responsiveness of macroeconomic beliefs to aggregate news, and we relate our findings to existing evidence on informational rigidities.
Author Disclosure Statement(s)
Daniel J. Lewis
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
Christos Makridis
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
Karel Mertens
I declare that I have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
Christos Makridis
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
Karel Mertens
I declare that I have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
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