The paper focuses on the associations between the inflation forecasts of the Central Bank and inflation expectations of the households. The first part of the paper gives the theoretical background showing the importance of inflation expectations in the modern monetary policy as well as the usefulness of the inflation forecast in shaping the expectations.

Then the framework of the inflation forecast targeting in four countries is presented: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The starting period of the forecasts differs across the countries considered between the years 2001 and 2005. The examination period finishes with the year 2010 end.

The author develops and tests the following two hypotheses. The first one assumes that the interdependences between the inflation forecast results and consumers inflation expectations exist. The second hypothesis states that the existence of the associations between the inflation forecasts and inflation expectations depends neither on detailed solutions in the field of forecasting inflation applied by Central Banks nor on their attitude towards inflation forecast targeting implementation.

The correlations are test using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient, Kendall Tau correlation coefficient and Chi-square test for independence. The key findings of the paper are as follows:

• the relationship between the inflation results and consumers inflation expectations has found to be either statistically unimportant, or they have weak or moderate strength
• the second hypothesis, assuming that no solution in the field of forecasting inflation may be perceived as more appropriate, may not be verified

As such, the paper contributes to a broader analysis of the forward-looking attitude of these central banks which implement both direct inflation targeting as well as inflation forecast targeting measures.