Inflationary Household Uncertainty Shocks

Abstract

I construct a novel measure of household uncertainty based on survey data for European countries. I show that household uncertainty shocks do not universally behave like negative demand shocks. Notably, household uncertainty shocks are largely inflationary in Europe. Further analysis, including a comparison of results across countries, suggest that factors related to average markups along with monetary policy play a role in the transmission of household uncertainty to inflation.These results lend support to a pricing bias mechanism as an important transmission channel.

Keywords: uncertainty, inflation, surveys of expectations

JEL Classification: D84, E30, E52, E71