IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedcec/y2010idec6n2010-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Simple ways to forecast inflation: what works best?

Author

Listed:
  • Brent Meyer
  • Mehmet Pasaogullari

Abstract

There are many ways to forecast the future rate of inflation, ranging from sophisticated statistical models involving hundreds of variables to hunches based on past experience. We generate a number of forecasts using a simple statistical model and an even simpler estimating rule, adding in various measures thought to be helpful in predicting the course of inflation. Then we compare their forecast accuracy. We find that no single specification outperforms all others over all time periods. For example, the median and 16 percent trimmed-mean measures outperform all other specifications during the 1990s, and survey-based inflation expectations seem to do better during volatile periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Brent Meyer & Mehmet Pasaogullari, 2010. "Simple ways to forecast inflation: what works best?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Dec.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedcec:y:2010:i:dec6:n:2010-17
    DOI: 10.26509/frbc-ec-201017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-ec-201017
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26509/frbc-ec-201017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lillian Kamal, 2014. "Do GAP Models Still have a Role to Play in Forecasting Inflation?," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 8(3), pages 1-12.
    2. Jose Luis Nolazco & Pablo Pincheira & Jorge Selaive, 2016. "The evasive predictive ability of core inflation," Working Papers 15/34, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
    3. Brent Meyer & Saeed Zaman, 2013. "It’s not just for inflation: The usefulness of the median CPI in BVAR forecasting," Working Papers (Old Series) 1303, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    4. Brent Meyer & Guhan Venkatu, 2012. "Trimmed-mean inflation statistics: just hit the one in the middle," Working Papers (Old Series) 1217, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    5. Alan K. Detmeister, 2011. "The usefulness of core PCE inflation measures," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-56, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Theodore M. Crone & N. Neil K. Khettry & Loretta J. Mester & Jason A. Novak, 2013. "Core Measures of Inflation as Predictors of Total Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(2‐3), pages 505-519, March.
    7. Brent Meyer & Saeed Zaman, 2019. "The usefulness of the median CPI in Bayesian VARs used for macroeconomic forecasting and policy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 603-630, August.
    8. Ooft, Gavin, 2018. "Modelling and Forecasting Inflation for the Economy of Suriname," EconStor Preprints 215534, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Garciga, Christian & Knotek II, Edward S., 2019. "Forecasting GDP growth with NIPA aggregates: In search of core GDP," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1814-1828.
    10. Pincheira-Brown, Pablo & Selaive, Jorge & Nolazco, Jose Luis, 2019. "Forecasting inflation in Latin America with core measures," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1060-1071.
    11. Ooft, Gavin, 2020. "Forecasting Monthly Inflation: An Application To Suriname," Studies in Applied Economics 144, The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.
    12. Amy Higgins & Randal J. Verbrugge, 2015. "Tracking Trend Inflation: Nonseasonally Adjusted Variants of the Median and Trimmed-Mean CPI," Working Papers (Old Series) 1527, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    13. Kapur, Muneesh, 2013. "Revisiting the Phillips curve for India and inflation forecasting," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 17-27.
    14. Fereydooni, Ali & Barak, Sasan & Asaad Sajadi, Seyed Mehrzad, 2024. "A novel online portfolio selection approach based on pattern matching and ESG factors," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    15. Anthoulla Phella, 2020. "Forecasting With Factor-Augmented Quantile Autoregressions: A Model Averaging Approach," Papers 2010.12263, arXiv.org.
    16. Verbrugge, Randal & Zaman, Saeed, 2024. "Improving inflation forecasts using robust measures," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 735-745.
    17. Alan K. Detmeister, 2012. "What should core inflation exclude?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-43, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Kevin Fergusson, 2020. "Forecasting inflation using univariate continuous‐time stochastic models," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(1), pages 37-46, January.
    19. Randal J. Verbrugge, 2021. "Is It Time to Reassess the Focal Role of Core PCE Inflation?," Working Papers 21-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Forecasting; Inflation (Finance);

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedcec:y:2010:i:dec6:n:2010-17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: 4D Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbclus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.