Monitoring attention to inflation in the news

The level of attention paid to inflation affects people’s inflation expectations and, in turn, price and wage-setting decisions. This box puts forward a measure of inflation attention based on a substantial corpus of newspaper articles from the largest euro area countries. The measure is derived from the proportion of articles that contain inflation-related keywords. The indicator spiked during the recent high inflation period, reflecting an increased focus on price developments. Although inflation attention has eased since, this decrease has been more gradual than the decline in inflation itself, mirroring trends observed in consumers’ inflation perceptions. Attention remains relatively high, particularly with regard to food price developments, which could have implications for how future inflation shocks affect inflation expectations and propagate through the economy.