Twitter a goldmine to track consumer mood on prices: Bank of Italy

"The results suggest that Twitter can be a new timely source for devising a method to elicit beliefs," the authors of the 107-page study said

The Bank of Italy said on Monday a set of experimental indicators it created from the content of millions of tweets accurately tracked consumer mood on price, offering scope for a powerful new monetary policy tool.

The effort comes as economists and policy-makers around the world increasingly turn to social media and other unconventional sources to measure consumer behaviour and as inflation continues to defy targets set by many leading central banks.

Researchers found their indicators, based on millions of tweets, not only tallied with final inflation read-outs and existing measures of price expectations by Italy's national statistics office, financial markets and