Selling Price Expectations

Selling Price Expectations, officially "Selling price expectations (next 3 months)", tracks firms' own price plans. It is 1 monthly question inside 4 business surveys of the Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer Surveys. Run by DG ECFIN, the Commission department for economic and financial affairs, it polls managers in manufacturing, services, retail trade and construction.

National institutes collect replies on harmonised forms; results cover EU states, the euro-area aggregate and candidate countries, and Eurostat publishes the dataset. Each answer is increase, unchanged or decrease; the balance, increases minus decreases, measures direction, not realised inflation like HICP, the consumer inflation gauge.

Responses are usually collected during weeks 1 to 3 and sent to DG ECFIN at least 5 working days before month-end. Detailed results appear 2 working days before month-end, except December results in early January, with a consumer flash, an early estimate, around the 20th.

January, April, July and October releases also carry quarterly surveys, while April and November releases also carry investment questions. Each release reports sector results, confidence gauges and tables, including the Economic Sentiment, Employment Expectations and Economic Uncertainty indicators. Seasonally adjusted balances, with normal seasonal patterns removed, are revised after errors and each January.

Four separate sector series feed the picture; each survey yields its own balance.

• Manufacturing: share of industrial managers expecting selling prices to rise or fall over the next 3 months (Question 6); it captures goods pipeline pressure.
• Services: share of services managers expecting prices charged to rise or fall over the next 3 months (Question 6); it captures services price intentions.
• Retail: share of retailers expecting prices to rise or fall over the next 3 months (Question 6); it is closest to consumer-facing goods prices.
• Construction: share of construction managers expecting prices charged to rise or fall over the next 3 months (Question 5); it captures building price intentions.

In April 2022 all 4 business balances hit all-time highs together: industry 60.8 points, services 29.8, retail 56.4 and construction 52.0. The release sets such levels against their long-term average, the series mean over history.

In the same release the separate household series, consumer price expectations for the next 12 months, fell from a March 2022 high. Meanwhile overall sentiment weakened even as business price plans spiked. The lesson is that balances measure expected direction, not realised inflation, and business plans can diverge from household views.

1. Stratum shares: Within each stratum, replies split into increase, unchanged and decrease shares, such as 35, 55 and 10, summing to 100. Firms may carry size weights like turnover, employment or production.
2. Stratum aggregation: National or sector shares are stratum shares averaged by stratum weights reflecting economic size, so totals still sum to 100.
3. Balance: The balance is increases minus decreases in points; unchanged answers do not count. For example, 35% increases and 10% decreases give +25 points.
4. EU and euro-area aggregation: Countries' reply shares are averaged using country weights based on economic size, smoothed over 2 years and updated each January. Industry uses industry value added; construction uses construction value added; services uses services value added; retail uses household consumption.
5. Seasonal adjustment: Since May 2022 balances are adjusted after aggregation with TRAMO-SEATS, using automatic outlier checks in JDemetra+. RegARIMA models refresh each January; published figures are adjusted unless labelled otherwise.