IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v61y2021i5d10.1007_s00181-020-01959-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forecasting inflation in the euro area: countries matter!

Author

Listed:
  • Angela Capolongo

    (Université Libre de Bruxelles
    CEPS)

  • Claudia Pacella

    (Université Libre de Bruxelles
    Bank of Italy)

Abstract

We construct a Bayesian vector autoregressive model with three layers of information: the key drivers of inflation, cross-country dynamic interactions, and country-specific variables. The model provides good forecasting accuracy with respect to the popular benchmarks used in the literature. We perform a step-by-step analysis to shed light on which layer of information is more crucial for accurately forecasting medium-run euro area inflation. Our empirical analysis reveals the importance of including the key drivers of inflation and taking into account the multi-country dimension of the euro area. The results show that the complete model performs better overall in forecasting inflation excluding energy and unprocessed food over the medium term. We use the model to establish stylized facts on the euro area and cross-country heterogeneity over the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Angela Capolongo & Claudia Pacella, 2021. "Forecasting inflation in the euro area: countries matter!," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2477-2499, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:61:y:2021:i:5:d:10.1007_s00181-020-01959-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-020-01959-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-020-01959-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00181-020-01959-4?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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kohn, Robert, 1982. "When is an aggregate of a time series efficiently forecast by its past?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 337-349, April.
    2. Forni, Mario & Hallin, Marc & Lippi, Marco & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2003. "Do financial variables help forecasting inflation and real activity in the euro area?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1243-1255, September.
    3. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2019. "Money, Credit, Monetary Policy, and the Business Cycle in the Euro Area: What Has Changed Since the Crisis?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 15(5), pages 137-173, December.
    4. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Is the Phillips Curve Alive and Well after All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 197-232, January.
    5. Riccardo Cristadoro & Giuseppe Saporito & Fabrizio Venditti, 2013. "Forecasting inflation and tracking monetary policy in the euro area: does national information help?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1065-1086, June.
    6. Bobeica, Elena & Jarociński, Marek, 2017. "Missing disinflation and missing inflation," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 30.
    7. Carlo Altavilla & Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza, 2016. "The Financial and Macroeconomic Effects of the OMT Announcements," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(3), pages 29-57, September.
    8. George-Marios Angeletos & Fabrice Collard & Harris Dellas, 2020. "Business-Cycle Anatomy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(10), pages 3030-3070, October.
    9. Amisano, Gianni & Giacomini, Raffaella, 2007. "Comparing Density Forecasts via Weighted Likelihood Ratio Tests," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 177-190, April.
    10. Huang, Kevin X.D. & Liu, Zheng, 2005. "Inflation targeting: What inflation rate to target?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1435-1462, November.
    11. Hendry, David F. & Hubrich, Kirstin, 2011. "Combining Disaggregate Forecasts or Combining Disaggregate Information to Forecast an Aggregate," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(2), pages 216-227.
    12. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2003. "Macroeconomic forecasting in the Euro area: Country specific versus area-wide information," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-18, February.
    13. Elena Bobeica & Marek Jarociński, 2019. "Missing Disinflation and Missing Inflation: A VAR Perspective," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 15(1), pages 199-232, March.
    14. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/13388 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2015. "Prior Selection for Vector Autoregressions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(2), pages 436-451, May.
    16. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Schuermann, Til & Smith, L. Vanessa, 2009. "Forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 642-675, October.
    17. Simon Gilchrist & Raphael Schoenle & Jae Sim & Egon Zakrajšek, 2017. "Inflation Dynamics during the Financial Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(3), pages 785-823, March.
    18. Marta Banbura & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Large Bayesian vector auto regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 71-92.
    19. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    20. Hubrich, Kirstin, 2005. "Forecasting euro area inflation: Does aggregating forecasts by HICP component improve forecast accuracy?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 119-136.
    21. Roma, Moreno & Skudelny, Frauke & Benalal, Nicholai & Diaz del Hoyo, Juan Luis & Landau, Bettina, 2004. "To aggregate or not to aggregate? Euro area inflation forecasting," Working Paper Series 374, European Central Bank.
    22. Fischer, B. & Lenza, M. & Pill, H. & Reichlin, L., 2009. "Monetary analysis and monetary policy in the euro area 1999-2006," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(7), pages 1138-1164, November.
    23. Faust, Jon & Wright, Jonathan H., 2013. "Forecasting Inflation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2-56, Elsevier.
    24. Diron, Marie & Mojon, Benoît, 2005. "Forecasting the central bank's inflation objective is a good rule of thumb," Working Paper Series 564, European Central Bank.
    25. Raffaella Giacomini & Halbert White, 2006. "Tests of Conditional Predictive Ability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1545-1578, November.
    26. Canova, Fabio, 2007. "G-7 Inflation Forecasts: Random Walk, Phillips Curve Or What Else?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 1-30, February.
    27. Libero Monteforte & Stefano Siviero, 2010. "The economic consequences of euro-area macro-modelling shortcuts," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(19), pages 2399-2415.
    28. Marta Banbura & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Large Bayesian vector auto regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 71-92.
    29. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    30. Robert B. Litterman, 1979. "Techniques of forecasting using vector autoregressions," Working Papers 115, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    31. Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele & Momferatou, Daphne & Onorante, Luca, 2014. "Short-term inflation projections: A Bayesian vector autoregressive approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 635-644.
    32. Ciccarelli, Matteo & Osbat, Chiara, 2017. "Low inflation in the euro area: Causes and consequences," Occasional Paper Series 181, European Central Bank.
    33. Bobeica, Elena & Jarociński, Marek, 2017. "Missing disinflation and missing inflation," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 30.
    34. Angelini, Elena & Lalik, Magdalena & Lenza, Michele & Paredes, Joan, 2019. "Mind the gap: A multi-country BVAR benchmark for the Eurosystem projections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1658-1668.
    35. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Schuermann, Til & Smith, L. Vanessa, 2009. "Rejoinder to comments on forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 703-715, October.
    36. Raffaella Giacomini & Barbara Rossi, 2010. "Forecast comparisons in unstable environments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 595-620.
    37. Andrew Atkeson & Lee E. Ohanian, 2001. "Are Phillips curves useful for forecasting inflation?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 25(Win), pages 2-11.
    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. Olga Korotkikh, 2020. "A Multi-Country BVAR Model for the External Sector," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 79(4), pages 98-112, December.
    2. Michele Lenza & Jiri Slacalek, 2024. "How does monetary policy affect income and wealth inequality? Evidence from quantitative easing in the euro area," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 746-765, August.

    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. Kirstin Hubrich & Frauke Skudelny, 2017. "Forecast Combination for Euro Area Inflation: A Cure in Times of Crisis?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(5), pages 515-540, August.
    2. Chalmovianský, Jakub & Porqueddu, Mario & Sokol, Andrej, 2020. "Weigh(t)ing the basket: aggregate and component-based inflation forecasts for the euro area," Working Paper Series 2501, European Central Bank.
    3. Rossi, Barbara, 2013. "Advances in Forecasting under Instability," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1203-1324, Elsevier.
    4. Bańbura, Marta & Bobeica, Elena, 2023. "Does the Phillips curve help to forecast euro area inflation?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 364-390.
    5. Colin Bermingham & Antonello D’Agostino, 2014. "Understanding and forecasting aggregate and disaggregate price dynamics," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 765-788, March.
    6. Mandalinci, Zeyyad, 2017. "Forecasting inflation in emerging markets: An evaluation of alternative models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 1082-1104.
    7. Gregor Bäurle & Elizabeth Steiner & Gabriel Züllig, 2021. "Forecasting the production side of GDP," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(3), pages 458-480, April.
    8. Cimadomo, Jacopo & Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele & Monti, Francesca & Sokol, Andrej, 2022. "Nowcasting with large Bayesian vector autoregressions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 500-519.
    9. Antonio M. Conti & Andrea Nobili & Federico M. Signoretti, 2018. "Bank capital constraints, lending supply and economic activity," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1199, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    10. Cobb, Marcus P A, 2018. "Improving Underlying Scenarios for Aggregate Forecasts: A Multi-level Combination Approach," MPRA Paper 88593, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Cobb, Marcus P A, 2017. "Aggregate Density Forecasting from Disaggregate Components Using Large VARs," MPRA Paper 76849, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Cobb, Marcus P A, 2017. "Forecasting Economic Aggregates Using Dynamic Component Grouping," MPRA Paper 81585, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Anastasios Evgenidis & Stephanos Papadamou, 2021. "The impact of unconventional monetary policy in the euro area. Structural and scenario analysis from a Bayesian VAR," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5684-5703, October.
    14. Ivan Kitov & Oleg Kitov, 2013. "Does Banque de France control inflation and unemployment?," Papers 1311.1097, arXiv.org.
    15. Antonio M. Conti & Concetta Gigante, 2018. "Weakness in Italy�s core inflation and the Phillips curve: the role of labour and financial indicators," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 466, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    16. Berg, Tim O. & Henzel, Steffen R., 2015. "Point and density forecasts for the euro area using Bayesian VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1067-1095.
    17. Barbara Rossi, 2019. "Forecasting in the presence of instabilities: How do we know whether models predict well and how to improve them," Economics Working Papers 1711, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2021.
    18. Lenza, Michele & Moutachaker, Inès & Paredes, Joan, 2023. "Density forecasts of inflation: a quantile regression forest approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 18298, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Cobb, Marcus P A, 2017. "Joint Forecast Combination of Macroeconomic Aggregates and Their Components," MPRA Paper 76556, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Faust, Jon & Wright, Jonathan H., 2013. "Forecasting Inflation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2-56, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation; Forecasting; Bayesian estimation; Multi-country model; Euro area;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:spr:empeco:v:61:y:2021:i:5:d:10.1007_s00181-020-01959-4. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.