The difficult art of eliciting long-run inflation expectations from government bond prices

Abstract

Central banks are always concerned with keeping long-run inflation expectations well anchored at some implicit or explicit low target inflation rate. To that end, they are constantly on the lookout for indicators that can gauge those expectations accurately. One such indicator frequently reported in the specialized financial press and by central banks around the world is constructed with the forward rates technique, which exploits price differentials between government bonds of various maturities. This article examines the theory behind those indicators and assesses the extent to which they can be trusted in practice.Inflation (Finance) ; Government securities ; Forecasting ; Banks and banking, Central ; Monetary policy ; Interest rates