Respondents to the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) for the third quarter of 2017 reported average point forecasts for inflation of 1.5%, 1.4% and 1.6% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively. That represents downward revisions of 0.1 percentage points at each of those three horizons. Average longer-term inflation expectations (which referred to 2022) remained unchanged at 1.8%. Expectations for the annual inflation rate of HICP excluding food and energy were revised upwards for 2017, to 1.1%, but remained unchanged for all other forecast horizons (1.3% in 2018, 1.5% in 2019 and 1.7% in 2022). SPF ... (full story)