News Selection and Household Inflation Expectations

We examine how the media’s systematic selection of reporting topics influences household responses to inflation news. In a model where households learn about inflation from news coverage, households account for news selection when forming their expectations. Because media are more likely to report on inflation when it is high, the model implies an asymmetric response to news: high-inflation news changes expectations more than low-inflation news. We test this implication using household panel data, and find that exposure to higher-prices news increases inflation expectations by 0.4 percentage point, while exposure to lower-prices news has no significant effect.