IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/2009s-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Calibration and Resolution Diagnostics for Bank of England Density Forecasts

Author

Listed:
  • John W. Galbraith
  • Simon van Norden

Abstract

This paper applies new diagnostics to the Bank of England's pioneering density forecasts (fan charts). We compute their implicit probability forecast for annual rates of inflation and output growth that exceed a given threshold (in this case, the target inflation rate and 2.5% respectively.) Unlike earlier work on these forecasts, we measure both their calibration and their resolution, providing both formal tests and graphical interpretations of the results. These results both reinforce earlier evidence on some of the limitations of these forecasts and provide new evidence on their information content. Cet étude développe et applique des nouvelles techniques pour diagnostiquer les prévisions de densité de la Banque d'Angleterre (leur fan charts). Nous calculons leurs probabilités implicites pour des taux d'inflation et de croissance du PIB qui dépassent des seuils critiques (soit le taux d'inflation ciblé, soit 2.5%.) En contraste avec des travaux antérieurs sur ces prévisions, nous gaugeons leur calibration aussi bien que leur résolution, en donnant des tests formels et des interprétations graphiques. Les résultats renforcent des conclusions déjà existant sur les limites de ces prévisions et ils donnent de nouvelles évidences sur leurs valeurs ajoutées.

Suggested Citation

  • John W. Galbraith & Simon van Norden, 2009. "Calibration and Resolution Diagnostics for Bank of England Density Forecasts," CIRANO Working Papers 2009s-36, CIRANO.
    • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2009s-36
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2009s-36.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Galbraith & Simon van Norden, 2008. "The Calibration Of Probabilistic Economic Forecasts," Departmental Working Papers 2008-05, McGill University, Department of Economics.
    2. 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.
    3. John W. Galbraith & Greg Tkacz, 2007. "Forecast content and content horizons for some important macroeconomic time series," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(3), pages 935-953, August.
    4. Diebold, Francis X & Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1989. "Scoring the Leading Indicators," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(3), pages 369-391, July.
    5. Casillas-Olvera, Gabriel & Bessler, David A., 2006. "Probability forecasting and central bank accountability," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 223-234, February.
    6. Dr. James Mitchell, 2008. "Evaluating Density Forecasts: Forecast Combinations, Model Mixtures, Calibration and Sharpness," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 320, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    7. Dean Croushore & Tom Stark, 2003. "A Real-Time Data Set for Macroeconomists: Does the Data Vintage Matter?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 605-617, August.
    8. Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Williams, John C., 2009. "Forecasting Recessions: The Puzzle of the Enduring Power of the Yield Curve," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 492-503.
    9. Kenneth F. Wallis, 1999. "Asymmetric density forecasts of inflation and the Bank of England's fan chart," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 167(1), pages 106-112, January.
    10. Wallis, Kenneth F., 1999. "Asymmetric density forecasts of inflation and the Bank of England's fan chart," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 167, pages 106-112, January.
    11. 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.
    12. Corradi, Valentina & Swanson, Norman R., 2006. "Predictive Density Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 197-284, Elsevier.
    13. Tilmann Gneiting & Fadoua Balabdaoui & Adrian E. Raftery, 2007. "Probabilistic forecasts, calibration and sharpness," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 69(2), pages 243-268, April.
    14. Lahiri, Kajal & Wang, J. George, 2013. "Evaluating probability forecasts for GDP declines using alternative methodologies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 175-190.
    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. Boero, Gianna & Smith, Jeremy & Wallis, Kenneth F., 2011. "Scoring rules and survey density forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 379-393.

    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. John W. Galbraith & Simon van Norden, 2008. "The Calibration of Probabilistic Economic Forecasts," CIRANO Working Papers 2008s-28, CIRANO.
    2. Galbraith, John W. & van Norden, Simon, 2011. "Kernel-based calibration diagnostics for recession and inflation probability forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1041-1057, October.
    3. Gergely Ganics & Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2024. "From Fixed‐Event to Fixed‐Horizon Density Forecasts: Obtaining Measures of Multihorizon Uncertainty from Survey Density Forecasts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(7), pages 1675-1704, October.
    4. Rossi, Barbara & Ganics, Gergely & Sekhposyan, Tatevik, 2020. "From Fixed-event to Fixed-horizon Density Forecasts: Obtaining Measures of Multi-horizon Uncertainty from Survey Density Foreca," CEPR Discussion Papers 14267, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Marc-Oliver Pohle, 2020. "The Murphy Decomposition and the Calibration-Resolution Principle: A New Perspective on Forecast Evaluation," Papers 2005.01835, arXiv.org.
    6. Lahiri, Kajal & Yang, Liu, 2013. "Forecasting Binary Outcomes," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1025-1106, Elsevier.
    7. Cees Diks & Valentyn Panchenko & Dick van Dijk, 2008. "Partial Likelihood-Based Scoring Rules for Evaluating Density Forecasts in Tails," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-050/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Clark, Todd & McCracken, Michael, 2013. "Advances in Forecast Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1107-1201, Elsevier.
    9. Anne Sofie Jore & James Mitchell & Shaun P. Vahey, 2010. "Combining forecast densities from VARs with uncertain instabilities," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 621-634.
    10. Goodhart Charles A.E., 2005. "The Monetary Policy Committee's Reaction Function: An Exercise in Estimation," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-42, August.
    11. Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex, 2008. "Monetary Policy Evaluation in Real Time: Forward-Looking Taylor Rules Without Forward-Looking Data," MPRA Paper 11352, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Dr. James Mitchell, 2009. "Measuring Output Gap Uncertainty," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 342, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    13. Alex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, 2011. "Monetary Policy Estimation in Real Time: Forward-Looking Taylor Rules without Forward-Looking Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(5), pages 871-897, August.
    14. Amendola, Alessandra & Christian, Francq, 2009. "Concepts and tools for nonlinear time series modelling," MPRA Paper 15140, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Terasvirta, Timo, 2006. "Forecasting economic variables with nonlinear models," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 413-457, Elsevier.
    16. Knüppel, Malte & Schultefrankenfeld, Guido, 2019. "Assessing the uncertainty in central banks’ inflation outlooks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1748-1769.
    17. Geoff Kenny & Thomas Kostka & Federico Masera, 2015. "Density characteristics and density forecast performance: a panel analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1203-1231, May.
    18. Romanus, Eduardo E. & Silva, Eugênio & Goldschmidt, Ronaldo R., 2024. "Empirical probabilistic forecasting: An approach solely based on deterministic explanatory variables for the selection of past forecast errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 184-201.
    19. Knüppel, Malte & Schultefrankenfeld, Guido, 2008. "How informative are macroeconomic risk forecasts? An examination of the Bank of England's inflation forecasts," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2008,14, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    20. Tsyplakov, Alexander, 2011. "Evaluating density forecasts: a comment," MPRA Paper 31184, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:cir:cirwor:2009s-36. 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: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.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.