Jaemin Jeong, Eunseong Ma, Choongryul YangWhen do households listen to the Fed? We show the answer lies in a simple but powerful force: household attention to macroeconomic conditions. We develop a model where attention acts as a crucial gatekeeper for the pass-through of policy news to beliefs, and confirm its predictions using household survey data. We find that belief revisions to monetary policy surprises are concentrated among attentive individuals—particularly those with high financial stakes—and this effect strengthens dramatically during uncertain times. This implies the expectations channel is most potent when it matters most, suggesting policymakers should account for the time-varying and heterogeneous nature of public attention.
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