Welcome! I’m an Assistant Professor of Finance at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo. My research interest is in Household Finance, Macroeconomic Expectations, Labor Economics and Central Bank Communication.
I am completing my PhD in Economics at the University of Oxford. Previously, I have been affiliated with the European Central Bank, Norges Bank and De Nederlandsche Bank.
I am always happy to chat about my research! Contact me at: lovisa.reiche@bi.no
Research
Beyond Groceries: Forecast Confidence and the Gender Gap in Inflation Expectations (last updated: September 2025)
Winner of the Bundesbank Early Career Prize in Financial Literacy Research (2024) and Royal Economic Society Best Poster Award (2023)
Finalist of the ECB Young Economist Prize (2025)
CESifo Working Paper No. 11588
Presented at: University of Copenhagen (March 2023), University of Oxford (April 2023), RES PhD Conference (June 2023), Bocconi University (June 2023), University of Bamberg (July 2023), CEPR Central Bank Communication Seminar Series (October 2023), CEPR Symposium (December, 2023), National Bank of Belgium (December 2023), Norges Bank Spring Institute (March 2024), RES Annual Conference (March, 2024), Stanford University (April 2024), European Central Bank (October, 2024), University of Bergamo (October, 2024), University of Mannheim (November, 2024), CESifo Munich (December 2024), Bundesbank Spring Conference (April, 2025), ECB Forum (July 2025), SAFE Household Finance Workshop (July 2025), CEPR Household Finance Conference (September 2025), European Central Bank (October 2025)
This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand heterogeneity in inflation expectations. I integrate two mechanisms previously studied in isolation, exposure to salient prices and forecast confidence, within a Bayesian learning model. Empirically, I examine these mechanisms through the well-documented gender gap in inflation expectations. German and US household data confirm that forecast confidence is the dominant driver, while exposure to grocery prices matters only for low-confidence respondents. Forecast confidence is improved by financial literacy. Beyond gender, I provide a lens to study demographic heterogeneity, and show that salient prices exert greater influence during periods of elevated macroeconomic uncertainty.
Divergent Perceptions, Divergent Pay: Inflation and the Gender Wage Gap (2025, together with Nicolò Maffei-Faccioli)
Winner of the SNDE Young Scholar Award (2025) and ICEEE LABOUR Prize in Microeconometrics (2025)
New!!! Working Paper
Presented at: Kiel Institute & CEPR (March 2025), Society for Nonlinear Dynamics (March 2025), MMF PhD Conference (April 2025), Bank of Finland & CEPR (May 2025), 11th ICEEE (May 2025), University of Oxford (June, 2025), IAAE Conference (June 2025), NorMac (August 2025), Oslo Macro Conference (August 2025), European Central Bank (October 2025)
How does the gender wage gap respond to inflation? We show that it widens after both supply- and demand-driven inflationary shocks. This widening reflects gender differences in labor market perceptions: women interpret inflation as a signal of deteriorating conditions, while men perceive mild improvement. These divergent beliefs reduce women’s willingness to negotiate, slowing their nominal wage growth relative to men’s. To formalize this mechanism, we develop a New Keynesian search-and-matching model where workers do not observe the true nature of the shock and women form ambiguity averse beliefs while men are ambiguity loving. The model replicates the observed cyclicality of the gender wage gap, establishing a novel link between inflation and gender inequality.
Five Facts About Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Four Different Groups of Agents (2024, together with Eleonora Granziera, Nicolò Maffei-Faccioli, Michael Weber and Tuva Marie Fastbø)
Presented at: Norges Bank (September 2024), Bank of Italy (November, 2024), Czech National Bank (November, 2024), Banque de France (March 2025), Society for Nonlinear Dynamics (March, 2025), IAAE Conference (June 2025), CEBRA (August 2025), Oslo Macro Conference (August 2025), University of Nuremberg (September 2025)
We provide five facts about the inflation expectations of households, firms, social partners, and economists from harmonized data spanning more than two decades: (i) Households’ mean expectations were highest pre-inflation surge, but firms’ expectations were highest since 2021 due to differential energy price movements. (ii) Disagreement displays similar patterns. (iii) Short-term shape medium-term forecasts, with magnitudes differing across groups and regimes. (iv) The pass-through from inflation to wage expectations is below one, strongest for business leaders and weakest for social partners. (v) Electricity price shocks causally raise inflation expectations. Taken together, the unanchoring of inflation expectations is pervasive across time and groups but the threat of price-wage spirals remains limited.
Who’s on FIRE? Household characteristics and the formation of inflation expectations (2024, together with Gabriele Galati, Richhild Moessner and Maarten van Rooij)
Presented at: Czech National Bank (November 2024), De Nederlandsche Bank (March 2025), University of Padova (September 2025)
We study how consumers form and revise inflation expectations using a unique, highly balanced monthly panel of Dutch households. We develop a Bayesian framework that nests Full-Information Rational Expectations (FIRE) alongside common forecasting heuristics and test it by recovering person-specific belief-updating rules from individual time-series regressions. Our novel individual-level design reveals substantial heterogeneity in how households process information over time. On average, consumers systematically overreact to current inflation, echoing patterns found for professional forecasters. Only 2.5 percent, predominantly wealthier, more educated men, behave consistently with FIRE. Most consumers rely on simple heuristics, especially adaptive expectations. Our results show that heuristic learning, not FIRE, characterizes expectation formation for the vast majority of households. Crucially, heterogeneity in belief updating is both large and systematic.
Narratives of Inflation: Evidence from the US and South Africa (2025)
Experiment registered at the AEA RCT Registry: AEARCTR-0012206
Presented at: University of Oxford (June, 2024), Czech National Bank (November 2024), CSAE Conference (March 2025), South African Reserve Bank (June, 2025)
How do consumers update beliefs about the labor market in response to (dis)inflationary surprises? This paper finds that inflation shocks \textit{causally} increase unemployment expectations and reduce perceived job-finding probabilities in the US and South Africa. Such beliefs can explain large union wage premia for inflation surges, as seen in South Africa. Comparing the results to an emerging economy more exposed to supply-side shocks is important as narratives of inflation differ substantially and policy conclusions from advanced economies may not apply.
Policy Work
Does the Bank of England need gendered communication? (2024, with Michael McMahon)
National Institute Economic Review, No. 269, Vol. Autumn 2024, Pages: 29-46
Presented at: NIER Workshop on Central Banking (February, 2024), Blackrock (June 2025), European Central Bank (October 2025)
Covered by: Bloomberg (January 2025)
Central banks are concerned about how to communicate with the public to satisfy transparency and manage expectations. Nonetheless, there is much evidence that communication is not received equally by all and that expectations differ substantially between different demographics. Specifically, gender gaps have received attention as women hold the majority of consumer spending but appear to have higher and less anchored expectations about inflation than men in many economies. Using the Bank of England’s inflation attitudes survey we show that quantitatively survey forecasts of women resemble those of men in the UK, however, women are more uncertain about their forecasts and feel more negative about inflation. This has important consequences for the Bank of England, as it substantially worsens the sentiment women have towards the institution. We test whether improving knowledge about the bank could help satisfaction and find that it may have some impact. However, women use different informational channels from men such that outreach may be difficult.
Making sense of consumers’ inflation expectations – the role of uncertainty (2022, together with Aidan Meyler)
Full version: ECB Working Paper, European Commission Discussion Paper
Policy briefs: VoxEU (Sep 2022, together with Aidan Meyler and Christan Gayer), SUERF Policy Brief (Apr 2022, together with Aidan Meyler and Christian Gayer), ECB Economic Bulletin (Feb 2021, together with Aidan Meyler)
Consumers’ inflation expectations play a key role in the monetary transmission mechanism. As such, it is crucial for monetary policymakers to understand what they are and how they are formed. In this paper we introduce the (un)certainty channel as means to shed light on some of the more puzzling aspects of reported quantitative inflation perceptions and expectations. These include the apparent overestimation of inflation by consumers as well as the negative correlation observed between the economic outlook and inflation expectations. We also show that the uncertainty framework fits with some of the stylised facts of consumers’ inflation expectations, such as their correlation with socio-demographic characteristics and economic sentiment.
Inflation expectations and their role in Eurosystem forecasting (2021, together with the work stream on Inflation expectations chaired by Ursel Baumann, Thomas Westermann, Matthieu Darracq Pries and Marianna Riggi)
This paper summarises the findings of the Eurosystem’s Expert Group on Inflation Expectations (EGIE), which was one of the 13 work streams conducting analysis that fed into the ECB’s monetary policy strategy review. The EGIE was tasked with (i) reviewing the nature and behaviour of inflation expectations, with a focus on the degree of anchoring, and (ii) exploring the role that measures of expectations can play in forecasting inflation. While it is households’ and firms’ inflation expectations that ultimately matter in the expectations channel, data limitations have meant that in practice the focus of analysis has been on surveys of professional forecasters and on market-based indicators. Regarding the anchoring of inflation expectations, this paper considers a number of metrics: the level of inflation expectations, the responsiveness of longer-term inflation expectations to shorter-term developments, and the degree of uncertainty. Different metrics can provide conflicting signals about the scale and timing of potential unanchoring, which underscores the importance of considering all of them. Overall, however, these metrics suggest that in the period since the global financial and European debt crises, longer-term inflation expectations in the euro area have become less well anchored. Regarding the role measures of inflation expectations can play in forecasting inflation, this paper finds that they are indicative for future inflationary developments. When it comes to their predictive power, both market-based and survey-based measures are found to be more accurate than statistical benchmarks, but do not systematically outperform each other. Beyond their role as standalone forecasts, inflation expectations bring forecast gains when included in forecasting models and can also inform scenario and risk analysis in projection exercises performed using structural models. In terms of the implications for the ECB’s economic and monetary analysis going forward, the work of the EGIE essentially highlights the need for (i) more data on households’ and firms’ inflation expectations, (ii) a comprehensive framework for assessing (un)anchoring and (iii) further considerations regarding the use of observed expectation measures in forecasting models.
Lovisa Reiche 