collect timely and high - quality information on consumer expectations and decisions. we were particularly interested in filling in what we viewed as gaps in existing sources of information on household behavior, including data on household finance, labor, and housing market expectations. in addition, we decided that a rotating panel structure, one that tracks the same individuals over time, was necessary for many research and policy applications. having a panel reduces the variability induced by changes in composition month to month and increases the precision of any measured changes in expectations. before we implemented the survey, our proposal was reviewed and approved by the bank ’ s senior management. next, we issued a request for proposals and received three bids from independent survey organizations to field our survey design. in the end, we chose to work with the demand institute, a partnership of the conference board and nielsen. the resulting survey of consumer expectations is a nationally representative monthly internet - based survey. its rotating panel consists of about 1, 200 household heads. we find that the internet approach allows us a great deal of flexibility to ask new questions, and it bis central bankers ’ speeches makes it considerably easier to pose probabilistic questions and to run experiments. it is also – and this is an important consideration – the most cost - effective mode of collection ; at the same time, there is also some evidence of higher response accuracy to personally sensitive questions. our sample is based on the conference board ’ s consumer confidence survey sample, which is drawn from u. s. postal addresses. respondents are compensated with a payment of $ 15 per survey, and surveys vary in length from fifteen to thirty minutes. our firsttime response rate is about 60 percent, and we find that respondents have somewhat greater - than - average education and income. the average response rate among repeat respondents is more than 80 percent. we use weights based on the american community survey to construct summary statistics for our public releases. the survey consists of a core monthly module on expectations about macroeconomic and household - level variables and an additional quarterly module that allows us to address special topics. our core module contains questions about survey respondents ’ expectations for inflation, wage growth, home prices, various commodities, household income and spending, taxes, government debt, credit access, and job search. so far, quarterly modules have included questions on housing and employment, work history, job search, retirement, financial literacy, consumption and savings behavior, student loans, and various field experiments. these quarterly modules are developed by federal reserve staff in collaboration with academic consultants

on inflation expectations. bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches references armantier, o., s. nelson, g. topa, w. van der klaauw, and b. zafar. 2012. “ the price is right : updating of inflation expectations in a randomized price information experiment. ” federal reserve bank of new york staff reports, no. 543, revised january 2013. armantier, o., w. bruine de bruin, g. topa, w. van der klaauw, and b. zafar. 2011. “ inflation expectations and behavior : do survey respondents act on their beliefs? ” federal reserve bank of new york staff reports, no. 509. branch, w. a. 2004. “ the theory of rationally heterogeneous expectations : evidence from survey data on inflation expectations. ” the economic journal 114 ( july ) : 592 – 621. bruine de bruin, w., w. van der klaauw, j. s. downs, b. fischhoff, g. topa, and o. armantier. 2012. “ the effect of question wording on consumers ’ reported inflation expectations. ” journal of economic psychology 33, no. 4 ( august ) : 749 – 57. bruine de bruin, w., w. van der klaauw, and g. topa. 2011. “ expectations of inflation : the biasing effect of thoughts about specific prices. ” journal of economic psychology 32, no. 5 ( october ) : 834 – 45. carroll, c. d. 2003. “ macroeconomic expectations of households and professional forecasters. ” quarterly journal of economics, 118, no. 1 ( february ) : 269 – 298. engelberg, j., c. f. manski, and j. williams. 2009. “ comparing the point predictions and subjective probability distributions of professional forecasters ”, journal of business and economic statistics 27, no. 1 ( february ) : 30 – 41. evans, g. w., and s. honkapohja. 2001. learning and expectations in macroeconomics. princeton, new jersey : princeton university press. madeira, c., and b. zafar. 2012. “ heterogen