Political燩references,烬nd笺？.PDF

            News Consumption,     Political Preferences, and   Accurate Views on Inflation       David‐Jan Jansen    Matthias Neuenkirch                          Research Papers in Economics  No. 3/17  News consumption, political preferences, and accurate views on inflation* a b David-Jan Jansen and Matthias Neuenkirch a De Nederlandsche Bank b University of Trier March 2017 Abstract Using three waves of a customised survey among Dutch households, this paper studies the variation in people’s views on inflation. Based on a range of panel regressions, we find that accurate perceptions of recent price changes are an important determinant of the accuracy of next-year inflation expectations. The realism of inflation perceptions is, in turn, related to the intensity of newspaper consumption and also affected by the broadness of a person’s political preferences. However, more frequent newspaper usage does not necessarily reduce errors in inflation perceptions. Keywords: inflation expectations, inflation perceptions, newspaper readership, political preferences, household survey data. JEL classifications: D12, D83, D84, E31, E58. * We thank Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Carin van der Cruijsen, Lena Dräger, Michael Ehrmann, Jakob de Haan, Bernd Hayo, Richhild Moessner, Edith Neuenkirch, Florian Neumeier, Sanne Peeters, Maarten van Rooij, Stefania Rossi, and participants of the 2016 European Public Choice Conference, the 2016 World Finance Conference, a