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Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?

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Author Info
James H. Stock
Mark W. Watson

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Abstract

Forecasts of the rate of price inflation play a central role in the formulation of monetary policy, and forecasting inflation is a key job for economists at the Federal Reserve Board. This paper examines whether this job has become harder and, to the extent that it has, what changes in the inflation process have made it so. The main finding is that the univariate inflation process is well described by an unobserved component trend-cycle model with stochastic volatility or, equivalently, an integrated moving average process with time-varying parameters; this model explains a variety of recent univariate inflation forecasting puzzles. It appears currently to be difficult for multivariate forecasts to improve on forecasts made using this time-varying univariate model.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12324.

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Date of creation: Jun 2006
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12324

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Other Model Applications
E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation

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References listed on IDEAS
Please 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.:
  1. Mavroeidis, Sophocles, 2005. "Identification Issues in Forward-Looking Models Estimated by GMM, with an Application to the Phillips Curve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 421-48, June.
  2. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2002. "Has the Business Cycle Changed and Why?," NBER Working Papers 9127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Harvey, A C, 1985. "Trends and Cycles in Macroeconomic Time Series," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(3), pages 216-27, June.
  4. Andrew Ang & Geert Bekaert & Min Wei, 2005. "Do Macro Variables, Asset Markets or Surveys Forecast Inflation Better?," NBER Working Papers 11538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. 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 478-86, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. M. Dossche & G. Everaert, 2005. "Measuring inflation persistence: a structural time series approach," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 05/340, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Forecasting inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-335, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Barsky, Robert B., 1987. "The Fisher hypothesis and the forecastability and persistence of inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-24, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Flint Brayton & John M. Roberts & John C. Williams, 1999. "What's happened to the Phillips curve?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  10. Pivetta, Frederic & Reis, Ricardo, 2007. "The persistence of inflation in the United States," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1326-1358, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Todd E. Clark & Michael W. McCracken, 2003. "The predictive content of the output gap for inflation : resolving in-sample and out-of-sample evidence," Research Working Paper RWP 03-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Jonas D. M. Fisher & Chin Te Liu & Ruilin Zhou, 2002. "When can we forecast inflation?," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q I, pages 32-44. [Downloadable!]
  13. 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.
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  14. Andrew Atkeson & Lee E. Ohanian., 2001. "Are Phillips curves useful for forecasting inflation?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Win, pages 2-11. [Downloadable!]
  15. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "Forecasting Output and Inflation: The Role of Asset Prices," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(3), pages 788-829, September.
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  16. Arturo Estrella, 2005. "Why Does the Yield Curve Predict Output and Inflation?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 722-744, 07. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Harvey, Andrew C. & Trimbur, Thomas M. & Van Dijk, Herman K., 2007. "Trends and cycles in economic time series: A Bayesian approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 618-649, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change with Unknown Change Point," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 821-56, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please 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.)

  1. D'Agostino, Antonello & McQuinn, Kieran & O' Reilly, Gerard, 2008. "Identifying and Forecasting House Price Dynamics in Ireland," Research Technical Papers 3/RT/08, Central Bank & Financial Services Authority of Ireland (CBFSAI). [Downloadable!]
  2. Timothy Cogley & Argia M. Sbordone, 2006. "Trend inflation and inflation persistence in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," Staff Reports 270, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
  3. Michael Woodford, 2007. "How Important is Money in the Conduct of Monetary Policy?," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000001419, David K. Levine. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Michael D. Bordo & Barry Eichengreen, 2008. "Bretton Woods and the Great Inflation," NBER Working Papers 14532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Dean Croushore, 2006. "An evaluation of inflation forecasts from surveys using real-time data," Working Papers 06-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
  6. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow & Benjamin A. Malin, 2009. "Reset price inflation and the impact of monetary policy shocks," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-16, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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