Appraising Inflation Expectations in Russia in the Period of 2015–2020

Abstract

The paper reviews techniques for measuring inflation expectations in Russia in the period from 2015 to 2020. In the tree methods under review, which comprise adaptive expectations, stock exchange indicators, and sociological surveys of the Bank of Russia, the authors found both common and distinguishing features. All the reviewed methods demonstrated that inflation expectations remain high in Russia despite the relatively stable rates of the last few years on the level of 4–5 %. When estimated by the adaptive method in 2015–2020, the inflation expectations stayed between 0.5 and 6.2 %. The adaptive expectations allow a simplified approach to estimation as they depend on the level of the previous period’s inflation and do not react to economic shocks in the short term. The method of stock exchange indicators estimated the inflation expectations dynamics from 2.5 up to 8.6 %. Thanks to the opportunity of daily monitoring inflation expectations, this method is better at analyzing factors that impact the sentiments of market agents. A comparative analysis of approaches to estimating inflation expectations revealed that expectations according to sociological surveys of the Bank of Russia happened to surpass the actual inflation. In the period 2015–2020 the level of inflation expectations varied between 8 and 17 %, which is much higher than Russia’s inflation level.l.