Are Central Banks' Projections Meaningful?
Abstract
Central banks' projections--i.e. forecasts conditional on a given interest rate path-- are often criticized on the grounds that their underlying policy assumptions are inconsistent with the existence of a unique equilibrium in many forward-looking models. Here I describe three alternative approaches to constructing projections that are not subject to the above criticism, using two different versions of New Keynesian model as reference frameworks. Most importantly, I show how the three approaches generate different projections for inflation and output, even though they imply an identical path for the interest rate. The latter result calls into question the meaning and usefulness of such projections.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 8027.Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8027
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Related research
Keywords: conditinal forecats; constant interest rate projections; inflation targeting; interest rate path; interest rate rules; multiple equilibria;Other versions of this item:
- Jordi Galí, 2010. "Are Central Banks' Projections Meaningful?," NBER Working Papers 16384, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
- E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2010-10-09 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBA-2010-10-09 (Central Banking)
- NEP-FOR-2010-10-09 (Forecasting)
- NEP-MAC-2010-10-09 (Macroeconomics)
- NEP-MON-2010-10-09 (Monetary Economics)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Rochelle M. Edge & Refet S. Gurkaynak, 2011. "How useful are estimated DSGE model forecasts?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-11, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
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