New dimension of the inflation expectations’ anchoring: dynamics and determinants for Russia
Julia Krotova, Henry Penikas
A paper by (Apokoritis et al., 2025) was published in the January 2025 issue of the International Journal of Central Banking (IJCB) managed by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). It seems to be the first study to suggest an additional dimension of inflation expectations’ anchoring (IEA) when respondents tend to assign small weights to extreme inflation outcomes in the future.
To study new IEA dimension for Russia we rely upon the unique dataset – voluntarily crowd-survey of the Bank of Russia employees. It comports 13 waves collected during 4 years since 2023 to 2026. Respondents are asked not only to provide they mean inflation expectations, but also the relative probabilities (ranks) of inflation tail values. For respondents’ convenience, answers are structured by inflation value buckets and limited to categorized ranks. Thus, the collected answers by construction allow us to study new IAE dimension.
Our results show that since December 2025 the tendency for inflation expectations’ anchoring started (respondents tended to assign lower probabilities to the inflation tail values). However, the observed pattern is true for the respondents claiming to possess savings. It is also too early to claim that inflation expectations overall got fully anchored.
We also find that inflation expectations are less anchored if the person does not possess savings, does not consider the time worth saving; is elder than the median and is less financially literate.
The new dimension of IEA can be used in line with other indicators of IE. However, data on the actual consumer and saving behavior of respondents is needed to evaluate the use value of the new indicator.