IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/15-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ex-post Inflation Forecast Uncertainty and Skew Normal Distribution: ‘Back from the Future’ Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Wojciech Charemza
  • Carlos Díaz
  • Svetlana Makarova

Abstract

Empirical evaluation of macroeconomic uncertainty and its use for probabilistic forecasting are investigated. New indicators of forecast uncertainty, which either include or exclude effects of macroeconomic policy, are developed. These indicators are derived from the weighted skew normal distribution proposed in this paper, which parameters are interpretable in relation to monetary policy outcomes and actions. This distribution is fitted to forecast errors, obtained recursively, of annual inflation recorded monthly for 38 countries. Forecast uncertainty term structure is evaluated for U.K. and U.S. using new indicators and compared with earlier results. This paper has supplementary material.

Suggested Citation

  • Wojciech Charemza & Carlos Díaz & Svetlana Makarova, 2015. "Ex-post Inflation Forecast Uncertainty and Skew Normal Distribution: ‘Back from the Future’ Approach," Discussion Papers in Economics 15/09, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:15/09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp15-09.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giordani, Paolo & Soderlind, Paul, 2003. "Inflation forecast uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1037-1059, December.
    2. Demertzis, Maria & Hughes Hallett, Andrew, 2007. "Central Bank transparency in theory and practice," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 760-789, December.
    3. Carrion-i-Silvestre, Josep Lluís & Kim, Dukpa & Perron, Pierre, 2009. "Gls-Based Unit Root Tests With Multiple Structural Breaks Under Both The Null And The Alternative Hypotheses," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(6), pages 1754-1792, December.
    4. Berument, Hakan & Yalcin, Yeliz & Yildirim, Julide, 2009. "The effect of inflation uncertainty on inflation: Stochastic volatility in mean model within a dynamic framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1201-1207, November.
    5. Maximiano Pinheiro & Paulo Esteves, 2012. "On the uncertainty and risks of macroeconomic forecasts: combining judgements with sample and model information," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 639-665, June.
    6. Gary Koop & Dimitris Korobilis, 2012. "Forecasting Inflation Using Dynamic Model Averaging," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(3), pages 867-886, August.
    7. Andrade, Philippe & Le Bihan, Hervé, 2013. "Inattentive professional forecasters," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 967-982.
    8. Engelberg, Joseph & Manski, Charles F. & Williams, Jared, 2009. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 30-41.
    9. Carsten Hefeker & Blandine Zimmer, 2010. "Central bank independence and conservatism under uncertainty: Substitutes or complements?," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 140-10, Universität Siegen, Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht.
    10. N. Nergiz Dincer & Barry Eichengreen, 2014. "Central Bank Transparency and Independence: Updates and New Measures," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 10(1), pages 189-259, March.
    11. Siklos, Pierre L., 2013. "Sources of disagreement in inflation forecasts: An international empirical investigation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 218-231.
    12. Taylor, A M Robert, 2003. "Robust Stationarity Tests in Seasonal Time Series Processes," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 21(1), pages 156-163, January.
    13. Hielscher, Kai & Markwardt, Gunther, 2012. "The role of political institutions for the effectiveness of central bank independence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 286-301.
    14. Cogley, Timothy & Morozov, Sergei & Sargent, Thomas J., 2005. "Bayesian fan charts for U.K. inflation: Forecasting and sources of uncertainty in an evolving monetary system," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1893-1925, November.
    15. Andrew J. Patton & Allan Timmermann, 2011. "Predictability of Output Growth and Inflation: A Multi-Horizon Survey Approach," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 397-410, July.
    16. Greenwald, Bruce C & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1990. "Asymmetric Information and the New Theory of the Firm: Financial Constraints and Risk Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 160-165, May.
    17. So, Eric C., 2013. "A new approach to predicting analyst forecast errors: Do investors overweight analyst forecasts?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 615-640.
    18. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    19. Christian Buelens, 2012. "Inflation forecasting and the crisis: assessing the impact on the performance of different forecasting models and methods," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 451, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    20. Luca Greco, 2011. "Minimum Hellinger distance based inference for scalar skew-normal and skew-t distributions," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 20(1), pages 120-137, May.
    21. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Geraats, Petra M., 2006. "How transparent are central banks?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-21, March.
    22. Fushang Liu & Kajal Lahiri, 2006. "Modelling multi-period inflation uncertainty using a panel of density forecasts," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(8), pages 1199-1219.
    23. Michael P. Clements, 2004. "Evaluating the Bank of England Density Forecasts of Inflation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(498), pages 844-866, October.
    24. Neanidis, Kyriakos C. & Savva, Christos S., 2011. "Nominal uncertainty and inflation: The role of European Union membership," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 26-30, July.
    25. Perron, Pierre & Qu, Zhongjun, 2007. "A simple modification to improve the finite sample properties of Ng and Perron's unit root tests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 12-19, January.
    26. Michael P. Clements, 2014. "Forecast Uncertainty- Ex Ante and Ex Post : U.S. Inflation and Output Growth," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(2), pages 206-216, April.
    27. Francq, Christian & Zakoïan, Jean-Michel, 2012. "Qml Estimation Of A Class Of Multivariate Asymmetric Garch Models," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 179-206, February.
    28. Jan J. J. Groen & Richard Paap & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2013. "Real-Time Inflation Forecasting in a Changing World," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 29-44, January.
    29. Kontonikas, A., 2004. "Inflation and inflation uncertainty in the United Kingdom, evidence from GARCH modelling," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 525-543, May.
    30. Frenkel, Michael & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Zimmermann, Lilli, 2013. "Do private sector forecasters chase after IMF or OECD forecasts?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 217-229.
    31. Henry, Olan T. & Olekalns, Nilss & Suardi, Sandy, 2007. "Testing for rate dependence and asymmetry in inflation uncertainty: Evidence from the G7 economies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 383-388, March.
    32. Anna Clara Monti, 2003. "A note on the estimation of the skew normal and the skew exponential power distributions," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(2), pages 205-219.
    33. Garratt, Anthony & Koop, Gary & Mise, Emi & Vahey, Shaun P., 2009. "Real-Time Prediction With U.K. Monetary Aggregates in the Presence of Model Uncertainty," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 480-491.
    34. Thomas F. Cargill, 2013. "A Critical Assessment Of Measures Of Central Bank Independence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 260-272, January.
    35. Mauro Costantini & Robert M. Kunst, 2011. "Combining forecasts based on multiple encompassing tests in a macroeconomic core system," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 579-596, September.
    36. McDonald, James B. & Xu, Yexiao J., 1995. "A generalization of the beta distribution with applications," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 427-428, October.
    37. Bomberger, William A, 1996. "Disagreement as a Measure of Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(3), pages 381-392, August.
    38. Carlos Bowles & Roberta Friz & Veronique Genre & Geoff Kenny & Aidan Meyler & Tuomas Rautanen, 2007. "The ECB survey of professional forecasters (SPF) – A review after eight years’ experience," Occasional Paper Series 59, European Central Bank.
    39. Hilde C. Bjørnland & Karsten Gerdrup & Anne Sofie Jore & Christie Smith & Leif Anders Thorsrud, 2012. "Does Forecast Combination Improve Norges Bank Inflation Forecasts?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 74(2), pages 163-179, April.
    40. Serena Ng & Pierre Perron, 2001. "LAG Length Selection and the Construction of Unit Root Tests with Good Size and Power," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1519-1554, November.
    41. Arthur Pewsey, 2000. "Problems of inference for Azzalini's skewnormal distribution," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(7), pages 859-870.
    42. Kemp, Gordon C.R., 1991. "The Joint Distribution of Forecast Errors in the AR(1) Model," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(4), pages 497-518, December.
    43. Kenneth F. Wallis, 2004. "An Assessment of Bank of England and National Institute Inflation Forecast Uncertainties," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 189(1), pages 64-71, July.
    44. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/136280 is not listed on IDEAS
    45. Anthony Tay & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2000. "Density Forecasting: A Survey," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0370, Econometric Society.
    46. Todd E. Clark, 2011. "Real-Time Density Forecasts From Bayesian Vector Autoregressions With Stochastic Volatility," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 327-341, July.
    47. Elder, John, 2004. "Another Perspective on the Effects of Inflation Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(5), pages 911-928, October.
    48. Chiu, Jonathan & Molico, Miguel, 2010. "Liquidity, redistribution, and the welfare cost of inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(4), pages 428-438, May.
    49. 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.
    50. Matei Demetrescu & Mu-Chun Wang, 2014. "Incorporating Asymmetric Preferences into Fan Charts and Path Forecasts," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 76(2), pages 287-297, April.
    51. Fountas, Stilianos, 2010. "Inflation, inflation uncertainty and growth: Are they related?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 896-899, September.
    52. Peng, Amy & Yang, Ling, 2008. "Modelling uncertainty: A recursive VAR bootstrapping approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 478-481, June.
    53. Daal, Elton & Naka, Atsuyuki & Sanchez, Benito, 2005. "Re-examining inflation and inflation uncertainty in developed and emerging countries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 180-186, November.
    54. Kajal Lahiri & Xuguang Sheng, 2010. "Measuring forecast uncertainty by disagreement: The missing link," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 514-538.
    55. Robert Rich & Joseph Tracy, 2010. "The Relationships among Expected Inflation, Disagreement, and Uncertainty: Evidence from Matched Point and Density Forecasts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 200-207, February.
    56. Hartmann, Matthias & Herwartz, Helmut, 2012. "Causal relations between inflation and inflation uncertainty—Cross sectional evidence in favour of the Friedman–Ball hypothesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 144-147.
    57. Stilianos Fountas & Menelaos Karanasos & Jinki Kim, 2006. "Inflation Uncertainty, Output Growth Uncertainty and Macroeconomic Performance," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 68(3), pages 319-343, June.
    58. Dowd, Kevin, 2007. "Too good to be true? The (In)credibility of the UK inflation fan charts," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 91-102, March.
    59. Kemp, Gordon C.R., 1999. "The Behavior Of Forecast Errors From A Nearly Integrated Ar(1) Model As Both Sample Size And Forecast Horizon Become Large," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 238-256, April.
    60. Patton, Andrew J. & Timmermann, Allan, 2010. "Why do forecasters disagree? Lessons from the term structure of cross-sectional dispersion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 803-820, October.
    61. Michael Clements, 2006. "Evaluating the survey of professional forecasters probability distributions of expected inflation based on derived event probability forecasts," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 49-64, March.
    62. Víctor Gómez & Agustín Maravall, 1998. "Automatic Modeling Methods for Univariate Series," Working Papers 9808, Banco de España.
    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. Wojciech CHAREMZA & Carlos DÍAZ & Svetlana MAKAROVA, 2019. "Conditional Term Structure of Inflation Forecast Uncertainty: The Copula Approach," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(1), pages 5-18, March.
    2. Svetlana Makarova, 2016. "ECB footprints on inflation forecast uncertainty," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2016-5, Bank of Estonia, revised 19 Jul 2016.
    3. Wojciech Charemza & Carlos Diaz Vela & Svetlana Makarova, 2013. "Too many skew normal distributions? The practitioner’s perspective," Discussion Papers in Economics 13/07, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.

    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. Charemza, Wojciech & Díaz, Carlos & Makarova, Svetlana, 2019. "Quasi ex-ante inflation forecast uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 994-1007.
    2. Svetlana Makarova, 2014. "Risk and Uncertainty: Macroeconomic Perspective," UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series 129, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
    3. Wojciech Charemza & Carlos Diaz Vela & Svetlana Makarova, 2013. "Too many skew normal distributions? The practitioner’s perspective," Discussion Papers in Economics 13/07, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    4. Lee, Seohyun, 2017. "Three essays on uncertainty: real and financial effects of uncertainty shocks," MPRA Paper 83617, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Glas, Alexander & Hartmann, Matthias, 2016. "Inflation uncertainty, disagreement and monetary policy: Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 215-228.
    6. Svetlana Makarova, 2016. "ECB footprints on inflation forecast uncertainty," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2016-5, Bank of Estonia, revised 19 Jul 2016.
    7. Svetlana Makarova, 2018. "European Central Bank Footprints On Inflation Forecast Uncertainty," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 637-652, January.
    8. Wojciech CHAREMZA & Carlos DÍAZ & Svetlana MAKAROVA, 2019. "Conditional Term Structure of Inflation Forecast Uncertainty: The Copula Approach," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(1), pages 5-18, March.
    9. Manzan, Sebastiano, 2021. "Are professional forecasters Bayesian?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    10. Christian Grimme & Steffen Henzel & Elisabeth Wieland, 2014. "Inflation uncertainty revisited: a proposal for robust measurement," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 1497-1523, December.
    11. Robert W. Rich & Joseph Tracy, 2017. "The behavior of uncertainty and disagreement and their roles in economic prediction: a panel analysis," Staff Reports 808, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    12. Krüger, Fabian & Nolte, Ingmar, 2016. "Disagreement versus uncertainty: Evidence from distribution forecasts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(S), pages 172-186.
    13. Clements, Michael P., 2018. "Are macroeconomic density forecasts informative?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 181-198.
    14. Atalla, Tarek & Joutz, Fred & Pierru, Axel, 2016. "Does disagreement among oil price forecasters reflect volatility? Evidence from the ECB surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1178-1192.
    15. Fuest, Angela & Schmidt, Torsten, 2017. "Inflation expectation uncertainty, inflation and the output gap," Ruhr Economic Papers 673, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    16. Fernandes, Cecilia Melo, 2021. "ECB communication as a stabilization and coordination device: evidence from ex-ante inflation uncertainty," Working Paper Series 2582, European Central Bank.
    17. Hall, Stephen G. & Mitchell, James, 2007. "Combining density forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-13.
    18. Knüppel, Malte & Schultefrankenfeld, Guido, 2019. "Assessing the uncertainty in central banks’ inflation outlooks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1748-1769.
    19. repec:zbw:bofrdp:037 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Robert Rich & Joseph Tracy, 2021. "A Closer Look at the Behavior of Uncertainty and Disagreement: Micro Evidence from the Euro Area," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(1), pages 233-253, February.
    21. Clements, Michael P., 2021. "Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 634-646.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    forecast term structure; macroeconomic forecasting; monetary policy; non-normality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C54 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Quantitative Policy Modeling
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lec:leecon:15/09. 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: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.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.