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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.

We examine the usefulness of communication by the European Central Bank for predicting its policy decisions during the early years of the European Economic and Monetary Union. Using ordered probit models based on the Taylor rule, we find that statements on the main refinancing rate and future inflation are significantly related to interest rate decisions. At the same time, an out-of-sample evaluation shows that communication-based models do not outperform models based on macroeconomic data in predicting decisions. Both types of models have difficulty in predicting changes in the main refinancing rate. (author's abstrac)