Household surveys and probabilistic questions

In this chapter, we cover the history, methodology, and recent advances in the use of probabilistic questions on household surveys that assess economic expectations. Section 1.1 discusses the history and motivation for measuring household economic expectations. We include an overview of major ongoing expectations surveys and their focal topics. Section 1.2 discusses methodological considerations about how to design surveys of economic expectations, and how to test what works. We present best-practice guidelines that should be useful for designing surveys of expectations on a variety of topics, including panel surveys, cross-sectional surveys, survey-based experiments, and ad-hoc surveys. Section 1.3 discusses recent advances, and suggests topics for future research.