This paper investigates the use of trimmed means as high-frequency estimators of" inflation. The known characteristics of price change distributions, specifically the observation" that they generally exhibit high levels of kurtosis, imply that simple averages of price data are" unlikely to produce efficient estimates of inflation. Trimmed means produce superior estimates" of core inflation,' which we define as a long-run centered moving average of CPI and PPI" inflation. We find that trimming 9% from each tail of the CPI price-change distribution from the tails of the PPI price-change distribution, yields an efficient estimator of core inflation" for these two series, although lesser trims also produce substantial efficiency gains. Historically the optimal trimmed estimators are found to be nearly 23% more efficient (in terms of root-mean-square error) than the standard mean CPI Moreover, the efficient estimators are robust to sample period and to the definition of the" presumed underlying long-run trend in inflation.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6183.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 1997 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6183
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
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Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M.R.A. Engel, 1991.
"Dynamic (S,s) Economies,"
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Caballero, Ricardo J & Engel, Eduardo M R A, 1991.
"Dynamic (S, s) Economies,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1659-86, November.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Michael F. Bryan & Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1994.
"Measuring Core Inflation,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Monetary Policy, pages 195-219
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
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Michael F. Bryan & Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1993.
"Measuring Core Inflation,"
NBER Working Papers
4303, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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