IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecmode/v76y2019icp199-215.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dismiss the output gaps? To use with caution given their limitations

Author

Listed:
  • Pichette, Lise
  • Robitaille, Marie-Noëlle
  • Salameh, Mohanad
  • St-Amant, Pierre

Abstract

The link between inflation and the output gap is central to the conduct of monetary policy. In this paper, we use a new real-time database for Canada to study various output gap measures. We analyze output gap revisions and assess the usefulness of these gaps in forecasting total CPI inflation and three newly developed measures of core CPI inflation: CPI-median, CPI-trim and CPI-common. We also consider labour input gaps, projected output gaps, and simple combinations of output gaps. We find that, when forecasting CPI-common and CPI-trim, some gaps appear to provide information that reduces forecast errors when compared with models that use only lags of inflation. However, forecast improvements are rarely statistically significant. In addition, we find little evidence of the usefulness of output gaps in forecasting inflation measured by total CPI and CPI-median. These results call for cautiousness when central banks use output gaps to forecast inflation as their usefulness is limited.

Suggested Citation

  • Pichette, Lise & Robitaille, Marie-Noëlle & Salameh, Mohanad & St-Amant, Pierre, 2019. "Dismiss the output gaps? To use with caution given their limitations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 199-215.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:76:y:2019:i:c:p:199-215
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2018.08.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999318304954
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econmod.2018.08.001?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Orphanides, Athanasios & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The Reliability of Inflation Forecasts Based on Output Gap Estimates in Real Time," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 583-601, June.
    2. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Musso, Alberto, 2011. "The reliability of real-time estimates of the euro area output gap," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1842-1856, July.
    3. Frédérick Demers, 2003. "The Canadian Phillips Curve and Regime Shifting," Staff Working Papers 03-32, Bank of Canada.
    4. Guérin, Pierre & Maurin, Laurent & Mohr, Matthias, 2015. "Trend-Cycle Decomposition Of Output And Euro Area Inflation Forecasts: A Real-Time Approach Based On Model Combination," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 363-393, March.
    5. Dovern, Jonas & Zuber, Christopher, 2017. "The Effect of Recessions on Potential Output Estimates: Size, Timing, and Determinants," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168180, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Lise Pichette & Pierre St-Amant & Ben Tomlin & Karine Anoma, 2015. "Measuring Potential Output at the Bank of Canada: The Extended Multivariate Filter and the Integrated Framework," Discussion Papers 15-1, Bank of Canada.
    7. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    8. Jan Jacobs & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2005. "Do Ifo Indicators Help Explain Revisions in German Industrial Production?," Contributions to Economics, in: Jan-Egbert Sturm & Timo Wollmershäuser (ed.), Ifo Survey Data in Business Cycle and Monetary Policy Analysis, pages 93-114, Springer.
    9. Grigoli, Francesco & Herman, Alexander & Swiston, Andrew & Di Bella, Gabriel, 2015. "Output gap uncertainty and real-time monetary policy," Russian Journal of Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 329-358.
    10. Russell Barnett, 2007. "Trend Labour Supply in Canada: Implications of Demographic Shifts and the Increasing Labour Force Attachment of Women," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2007(Summer), pages 5-18.
    11. Patrick Blagrave & Mr. Roberto Garcia-Saltos & Mr. Douglas Laxton & Fan Zhang, 2015. "A Simple Multivariate Filter for Estimating Potential Output," IMF Working Papers 2015/079, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2009. "Tests of Equal Predictive Ability With Real-Time Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 441-454.
    13. Leo Butler, 1996. "The Bank of Canada's New Quarterly Porjection Model Part 4 : A Semi- Structural Method to Estimate Potential Output : Combining Economic Theory with a Time-Series Filter," Technical Reports 77, Bank of Canada.
    14. Simon van Norden, 1995. "Why Is It So Hard to Measure the Current Output Gap?," Macroeconomics 9506001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. John Murray, 2013. "Monetary Policy Decision Making at the Bank of Canada," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2013(Autumn), pages 1-9.
    16. Rochelle M. Edge & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2016. "Real-Time Properties of the Federal Reserve's Output Gap," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(4), pages 785-791, October.
    17. Lawrence J. Christiano & Terry J. Fitzgerald, 2003. "The Band Pass Filter," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(2), pages 435-465, May.
    18. Robert F. Martin & Teyanna Munyan & Beth Anne Wilson, 2014. "Potential Output and Recessions: Are We Fooling Ourselves?," IFDP Notes 2014-11-12, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Sushanta K. Mallick & Mohammed Mohsin, 2016. "Macroeconomic Effects of Inflationary Shocks with Durable and Non-Durable Consumption," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 27(5), pages 895-921, November.
    20. Orphanides, Athanasios & Porter, Richard D. & Reifschneider, David & Tetlow, Robert & Finan, Frederico, 2000. "Errors in the measurement of the output gap and the design of monetary policy," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 117-141.
    21. Jean-Philippe Cayen & Simon van Norden, 2002. "La fiabilité des estimations de l'écart de production au Canada," Staff Working Papers 02-10, Bank of Canada.
    22. Ley, Eduardo & Misch, Florian, 2013. "Real-time macro monitoring and fiscal policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6303, The World Bank.
    23. Lise Pichette & Maria Bernier & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2018. "An Alternative Estimate of Canadian Potential Output: The Multivariate State-Space Framework," Discussion Papers 18-14, Bank of Canada.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Dany Brouillette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille & Laurence Savoie-Chabot & Pierre St-Amant & Bassirou Gueye & Elise Martin, 2019. "The Trend Unemployment Rate in Canada: Searching for the Unobservable," Staff Working Papers 19-13, Bank of Canada.
    2. Augustus J. Panton, 2020. "Climate hysteresis and monetary policy," CAMA Working Papers 2020-76, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    3. Camila Figueroa & Jorge Fornero & Pablo García, 2019. "Hindsight vs. Real time measurement of the output gap: Implications for the Phillips curve in the Chilean Case," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 854, Central Bank of Chile.
    4. Calista Cheung & Luke Frymire & Lise Pichette, 2020. "Can the Business Outlook Survey Help Improve Estimates of the Canadian Output Gap?," Discussion Papers 2020-14, Bank of Canada.
    5. Granados, Camilo & Parra-Amado, Daniel, 2024. "Estimating the output gap after COVID: How to address unprecedented macroeconomic variations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    6. Lise Pichette & Maria Bernier & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille, 2018. "An Alternative Estimate of Canadian Potential Output: The Multivariate State-Space Framework," Discussion Papers 18-14, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lise Pichette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille & Mohanad Salameh & Pierre St-Amant, 2018. "Dismiss the Gap? A Real-Time Assessment of the Usefulness of Canadian Output Gaps in Forecasting Inflation," Staff Working Papers 18-10, Bank of Canada.
    2. Dany Brouillette & Marie-Noëlle Robitaille & Laurence Savoie-Chabot & Pierre St-Amant & Bassirou Gueye & Elise Martin, 2019. "The Trend Unemployment Rate in Canada: Searching for the Unobservable," Staff Working Papers 19-13, Bank of Canada.
    3. Mr. Alvar Kangur & Koralai Kirabaeva & Jean-Marc Natal & Simon Voigts, 2019. "How Informative Are Real Time Output Gap Estimates in Europe?," IMF Working Papers 2019/200, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Calista Cheung & Luke Frymire & Lise Pichette, 2020. "Can the Business Outlook Survey Help Improve Estimates of the Canadian Output Gap?," Discussion Papers 2020-14, Bank of Canada.
    5. Julien Champagne & Guillaume Poulin‐Bellisle & Rodrigo Sekkel, 2018. "The Real‐Time Properties of the Bank of Canada's Staff Output Gap Estimates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1167-1188, September.
    6. Buncic, Daniel & Müller, Oliver, 2017. "Measuring the output gap in Switzerland with linear opinion pools," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 153-171.
    7. Ms. Burcu Hacibedel & Pierre Mandon & Ms. Priscilla S Muthoora & Nathalie Pouokam, 2019. "Inequality in Good and Bad Times: A Cross-Country Approach," IMF Working Papers 2019/020, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Cayen, Jean-Philippe & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The reliability of Canadian output-gap estimates," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 373-393, December.
    9. Josefine Quast & Maik H. Wolters, 2022. "Reliable Real-Time Output Gap Estimates Based on a Modified Hamilton Filter," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 152-168, January.
    10. Amador-Torres, J. Sebastián, 2017. "Finance-neutral potential output: An evaluation in an emerging market monetary policy context," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 389-407.
    11. Ince, Onur & Papell, David H., 2013. "The (un)reliability of real-time output gap estimates with revised data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 713-721.
    12. Camila Figueroa & Jorge Fornero & Pablo García, 2019. "Hindsight vs. Real time measurement of the output gap: Implications for the Phillips curve in the Chilean Case," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 854, Central Bank of Chile.
    13. Breuer, Sebastian & Elstner, Steffen, 2017. "Die Wachstumsperspektiven der deutschen Wirtschaft vor dem Hintergrund des demografischen Wandels: Die Mittelfristprojektion des Sachverständigenrates," Working Papers 07/2017, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.
    14. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2002. "Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 63-146.
    15. Garratt, Anthony & Mitchell, James & Vahey, Shaun P., 2014. "Measuring output gap nowcast uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 268-279.
    16. Orphanides, Athanasios & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The Reliability of Inflation Forecasts Based on Output Gap Estimates in Real Time," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 583-601, June.
    17. Jean-Philippe Cayen & Simon van Norden, 2002. "La fiabilité des estimations de l'écart de production au Canada," Staff Working Papers 02-10, Bank of Canada.
    18. Xueting Yu & Yuhan Zhu & Guangming Lv, 2020. "Analysis of the Impact of China’s GDP Data Revision on Monetary Policy from the Perspective of Uncertainty," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(6), pages 1251-1274, May.
    19. Guérin, Pierre & Maurin, Laurent & Mohr, Matthias, 2015. "Trend-Cycle Decomposition Of Output And Euro Area Inflation Forecasts: A Real-Time Approach Based On Model Combination," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 363-393, March.
    20. Lorenzo Burlon & Paolo D'Imperio, 2019. "The euro-area output gap through the lens of a DSGE model," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 477, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    More about this item

    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:eee:ecmode:v:76:y:2019:i:c:p:199-215. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30411 .

    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.