IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/emetrv/v34y2015i5p537-558.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modeling U.S. Inflation Dynamics: A Bayesian Nonparametric Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Markus Jochmann

Abstract

The properties of the inflation process and especially possible changes in its persistence have received much attention in the literature. However, empirical evidence is ambiguous. Some studies find that inflation persistence varied over time, others conclude it was constant. This article contributes further evidence to this ongoing debate by modeling U.S. inflation dynamics using a sticky infinite hidden Markov model (sticky IHMM). The sticky IHMM is a Bayesian nonparametric approach to modeling structural breaks. It allows for an unknown number of breakpoints and is a flexible and attractive alternative to existing methods. We found that inflation persistence was highest in 1973-74 and then again around 1980. However, credible intervals for our estimates of inflation persistence were very wide. Thus, a substantial amount of uncertainty about this aspect of inflation dynamics remained.

Suggested Citation

  • Markus Jochmann, 2015. "Modeling U.S. Inflation Dynamics: A Bayesian Nonparametric Approach," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(5), pages 537-558, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:emetrv:v:34:y:2015:i:5:p:537-558
    DOI: 10.1080/07474938.2013.806199
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07474938.2013.806199
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/07474938.2013.806199?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. Andrew T. Levin & Jeremy M. Piger, 2003. "Is inflation persistence intrinsic in industrial economies?," Working Papers 2002-023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    2. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert, 2002. "Regime Switches in Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 163-182, April.
    3. Gary Koop & Simon M. Potter, 2001. "Are apparent findings of nonlinearity due to structural instability in economic time series?," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 4(1), pages 1-38.
    4. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Evidence on Structural Instability in Macroeconomic Time Series Relations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(1), pages 11-30, January.
    5. Chib, Siddhartha, 1998. "Estimation and comparison of multiple change-point models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 221-241, June.
    6. Teh, Yee Whye & Jordan, Michael I. & Beal, Matthew J. & Blei, David M., 2006. "Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 1566-1581, December.
    7. Giordani, Paolo & Kohn, Robert & van Dijk, Dick, 2007. "A unified approach to nonlinearity, structural change, and outliers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 112-133, March.
    8. Nelson, Charles R & Schwert, G William, 1977. "Short-Term Interest Rates as Predictors of Inflation: On Testing the Hypothesis That the Real Rate of Interest is Constant," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 478-486, June.
    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. Fisher, Mark & Jensen, Mark J., 2019. "Bayesian inference and prediction of a multiple-change-point panel model with nonparametric priors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 210(1), pages 187-202.
    2. Maheu, John M. & Yang, Qiao, 2016. "An infinite hidden Markov model for short-term interest rates," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(PA), pages 202-220.
    3. Todd E. Clark & Florian Huber & Gary Koop & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2022. "Forecasting US Inflation Using Bayesian Nonparametric Models," Papers 2202.13793, arXiv.org.
    4. Hou, Chenghan, 2017. "Infinite hidden markov switching VARs with application to macroeconomic forecast," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 1025-1043.
    5. Jin, Xin & Maheu, John M., 2016. "Bayesian semiparametric modeling of realized covariance matrices," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(1), pages 19-39.
    6. Luc Bauwens & Jean-François Carpantier & Arnaud Dufays, 2017. "Autoregressive Moving Average Infinite Hidden Markov-Switching Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(2), pages 162-182, April.
    7. Yang, Qiao, 2019. "Stock returns and real growth: A Bayesian nonparametric approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 53-69.
    8. Yong Song & Tomasz Wo'zniak, 2020. "Markov Switching," Papers 2002.03598, arXiv.org.
    9. CARPANTIER, Jean-François & DUFAYS, Arnaud, 2014. "Specific Markov-switching behaviour for ARMA parameters," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014014, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    10. Didier Nibbering & Richard Paap & Michel van der Wel, 2016. "A Bayesian Infinite Hidden Markov Vector Autoregressive Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-107/III, Tinbergen Institute, revised 13 Oct 2017.
    11. Yong Song, 2014. "Modelling Regime Switching And Structural Breaks With An Infinite Hidden Markov Model," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(5), pages 825-842, August.
    12. Joshua C.C. Chan & Yong Song, 2018. "Measuring Inflation Expectations Uncertainty Using High‐Frequency Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1139-1166, September.
    13. Sergei Seleznev, 2019. "Truncated priors for tempered hierarchical Dirichlet process vector autoregression," Bank of Russia Working Paper Series wps47, Bank of Russia.
    14. Perricone, Chiara, 2018. "Clustering macroeconomic variables," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 23-33.

    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. Geweke, John & Jiang, Yu, 2011. "Inference and prediction in a multiple-structural-break model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 163(2), pages 172-185, August.
    2. Gary M. Koop & Simon M. Potter, 2004. "Forecasting and Estimating Multiple Change-point Models with an Unknown Number of Change-points," Discussion Papers in Economics 04/31, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    3. M. Hashem Pesaran & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2006. "Forecasting Time Series Subject to Multiple Structural Breaks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 1057-1084.
    4. Gary Koop & Simon M. Potter, 2009. "Prior Elicitation In Multiple Change-Point Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(3), pages 751-772, August.
    5. Jochmann, Markus & Koop, Gary & Strachan, Rodney W., 2010. "Bayesian forecasting using stochastic search variable selection in a VAR subject to breaks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 326-347, April.
    6. Jiawen Xu & Pierre Perron, 2015. "Forecasting in the presence of in and out of sample breaks," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2015-012, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    7. Jiawen Xu & Pierre Perron, 2015. "Forecasting in the presence of in and out of sample breaks," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2015-012, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    8. Michael L. Polemis & Thanasis Stengos, 2019. "Does competition prevent industrial pollution? Evidence from a panel threshold model," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 98-110, January.
    9. Luc Bauwens & Gary Koop & Dimitris Korobilis & Jeroen V.K. Rombouts, 2015. "The Contribution of Structural Break Models to Forecasting Macroeconomic Series," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 596-620, June.
    10. Jochmann Markus & Koop Gary, 2015. "Regime-switching cointegration," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 35-48, February.
    11. Yong Song, 2014. "Modelling Regime Switching And Structural Breaks With An Infinite Hidden Markov Model," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(5), pages 825-842, August.
    12. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 2004. "How costly is it to ignore breaks when forecasting the direction of a time series?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 411-425.
    13. Giordani, Paolo & Kohn, Robert, 2008. "Efficient Bayesian Inference for Multiple Change-Point and Mixture Innovation Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 66-77, January.
    14. Jiawen Xu & Pierre Perron, 2023. "Forecasting in the presence of in-sample and out-of-sample breaks," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(6), pages 3001-3035, June.
    15. repec:edn:sirdps:274 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. John M. Maheu & Stephen Gordon, 2008. "Learning, forecasting and structural breaks," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(5), pages 553-583.
    17. Georgios P. Kouretas & Mark E. Wohar, 2012. "The dynamics of inflation: a study of a large number of countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(16), pages 2001-2026, June.
    18. Franz Ruch & Mehmet Balcilar & Rangan Gupta & Mampho P. Modise, 2020. "Forecasting core inflation: the case of South Africa," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(28), pages 3004-3022, June.
    19. Koop, Gary & Potter, Simon, 2010. "A flexible approach to parametric inference in nonlinear and time varying time series models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 159(1), pages 134-150, November.
    20. Maheu, John M. & Song, Yong, 2014. "A new structural break model, with an application to Canadian inflation forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 144-160.
    21. Sjoerd van den Hauwe & Richard Paap & Dick J.C. van Dijk, 2011. "An Alternative Bayesian Approach to Structural Breaks in Time Series Models," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-023/4, Tinbergen Institute.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    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:taf:emetrv:v:34:y:2015:i:5:p:537-558. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/LECR20 .

    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.