This paper explores the causal effects of inflation literacy using a two-step randomized controlled trial. The first step shows that qualitative information about inflation and monetary policy ( Literacy treatment) enhances knowledge about these issues and raises both the likelihood of providing inflation predictions and trust in the central bank. The second step tests the joint impact of the Literacy treatment and further quantitative treatments. While the level of posterior expectations is affected only by quantitative information, inflation forecast uncertainty and trust react to both qualitative and quantitative information. Moreover, different information types may interact when impacting forecast uncertainty and trust.

Evaluating a new survey of German consumers, we test whether individual consumption spending decisions are formed according to a Euler equation model. We find that consumers are more likely to increase current spending if they plan to increase spending in the future and if they expect higher inflation. In the subsample of financially literate households, we find an additional negative effect of nominal interest rate expectations. The effects of macroeconomic expectations become stronger if consumers observed news on monetary policy or financial markets. These news effects are particularly pronounced for consumers who save and those with low inflation forecast accuracy.