The Fed’s Inflation Goal: What Does the Public Know?

“Lately, various Committee members … and Chair Yellen … have discussed the symmetry about the Committee’s inflation target. Our evidence suggests that the message may not have quite sunk in yet.”

Or perhaps the message did sink in, but wasn’t believed.

This is from Dave Altig, Nicholas Parker, and Brent Meyer at the Altlanta Fed’s macroblog:

The Fed’s Inflation Goal: What Does the Public Know?: The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has had an explicit inflation target of 2 percent since January 25, 2012. In its statement announcing the target, the FOMC said, “Communicating this inflation goal clearly to the public helps keep longer-term inflation expectations firmly anchored, thereby fostering price stability and moderate long-term interest rates and enhancing the Committee’s ability to promote maximum employment in the face of significant economic disturbances.”

If communicating this goal to the public enhances the effectiveness of monetary policy, one natural question is whether the public is aware of this 2 percent target. We’ve posed this question a few times to our Business Inflation Expectations Panel, which is a set of roughly 450 private, nonfarm firms in the Southeast. These firms range in size from large corporations to owner operators.

Last week, we asked them again. Specifically, the question is:

What annual rate of inflation do you think the Federal Reserve is aiming for over the long run?

Unsurprisingly, to us at least—and maybe to you if you’re a regular macroblog reader—the typical respondent answered 2 percent (the same answer our panel gave us in 2015 and back in 2011). At a minimum, southeastern firms appear to have gotten and retained the message.

So, why the blog post? Careful Fed watchers noticed the inclusion of a modifier to describe the 2 percent objective in the March 2017 FOMC statement (emphasis added): “The Committee will carefully monitor actual and expected inflation developments relative to its symmetric inflation goal.” And especially eagle-eyed Fed watchers will remember that the Committee amended its statement of longer-run goals in January 2016, clarifying that its inflation objective is indeed symmetric.

The idea behind a symmetric inflation target is that the central bank views both overshooting and falling short of the 2 percent target as equally bad. As then Minneapolis Fed President Kocherlakota stated in 2014, “Without symmetry, inflation might spend considerably more time below 2 percent than above 2 percent. Inflation persistently below the 2 percent target could create doubts in households and businesses about whether the FOMC is truly aiming for 2 percent inflation, or some lower number.”

Do such doubts actually exist? In a follow-up to our question about the numerical target, in the latest survey we asked our panel whether they thought the Fed was more, less, or equally likely to tolerate inflation below or above its target. The following chart depicts the responses.

One in five respondents believes the Federal Reserve is more likely to accept inflation above its target, while nearly 40 percent believe it is more likely to accept inflation below its target. Twenty-five percent of firms believe the Federal Reserve is equally likely to accept inflation above or below its target. The remainder of respondents were unsure. This pattern was similar across firm sizes and industries.

In other words, more firms see the inflation target as a threshold (or ceiling) that the Fed is averse to crossing than see it as a symmetric target.

Lately, various Committee members (here, here, and in Chair Yellen’s latest press conference at the 42-minute mark) have discussed the symmetry about the Committee’s inflation target. Our evidence suggests that the message may not have quite sunk in yet.