Information Treatments, Hypotheticals, and Event Studies: Comparative Estimates

We compare three approaches to measuring how consumer expectations respond to monetary policy announcements: randomized hypothetical scenarios, randomized information provision, and surveys fielded immediately before and after an actual announcement. We embed all three in a two-wave survey around the Federal Reserve’s September 2025 rate cut. The designs reveal the same qualitative pattern: respondents associate a rate cut with lower inflation and unemployment expectations and stronger expected economic activity. The vignette estimates are substantially larger than the average RCT and event-study estimates. The differences shrink when we focus on RCT respondents for whom the policy decision was new information and compare pre- and post-announcement expectations among respondents who knew about the decision. Expectation revisions also vary systematically with respondent-specific policy surprises.