Response Bias in Survey Measures of Expectations: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Expectations’ Inflation Module

The Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) infers respondents’ inflation expectations from density forecasts. Using numeracy data and tests for coherence among 117,000 respondents to the SCE, I find that forecasts suffer non-negligible reporting bias selective nonresponse. A simple verbal question collected by SCE suffers neither these deficiencies so has better properties deliver an accurate snapshot population's than headline measures published SCE. demonstrate how measure can be harnessed improve signal-to-noise ratio in