Since the mid-1980s, movements in both realized inflation and measures of longer-term inflation expectations have been somewhat muted, complicating the task of extracting the precise role of inflation expectations as a determinant of realized inflation. Faust and Wright (2013) review the literature on inflation forecasting and present evidence in support of the conclusion that measures of inflation expectations help predict the trend in inflation.
Cecchetti and others (2017) showed that while the level of realized inflation and four-quarter-ahead inflation expectations are positively correlated, changes in these variables have been largely uncorrelated since the mid-1980s.