Jansen, D. and Neuenkirch, M. (2018). Does the media help the general public in understanding inflation? Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 80(6):1185--1212.
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Affiliated author
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Publication year2018
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JournalOxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics
This paper studies whether media information helps the general public in understanding inflation. We combine detailed Dutch household survey data on media usage, inflation perceptions, and inflation expectations. We find no evidence that more-often informed members of the general public do better in understanding inflation. In fact, more frequent readership of popular newspapers is associated with slightly less accurate inflation perceptions. There is also no evidence that usage of non-print media leads to more accurate of views on inflation. One implication of these results is that central banks might need to consider more direct ways of engaging with the general public.