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Real-time properties of the Federal Reserve's output gap

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Abstract

This note considers the reliability of Federal Reserve Board staff estimates of the output gap after the mid-1990s, and examines the usefulness of these estimates for inflation forecasting. Over this period, we find that the Federal Reserve's output gap is more reliably estimated in real time than previous studies have documented for earlier periods and alternative estimation techniques. In contrast to previous work, we also find no deterioration in forecast performance when inflation projections are conditioned on real-time estimates of the output gap.

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  • Rochelle M. Edge & Jeremy B. Rudd, 2012. "Real-time properties of the Federal Reserve's output gap," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-86, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2012-86
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
    2. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, November.
    3. Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
    4. Peter K. Clark, 1987. "The Cyclical Component of U. S. Economic Activity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(4), pages 797-814.
    5. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Monetary policy evaluation with noisy information," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 605-631, April.
    6. Harvey, A C, 1985. "Trends and Cycles in Macroeconomic Time Series," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(3), pages 216-227, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Aikman, David & Kiley, Michael & Lee, Seung Jung & Palumbo, Michael G. & Warusawitharana, Missaka, 2017. "Mapping heat in the U.S. financial system," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 36-64.
    2. Kuang, Pei & Mitra, Kaushik, 2016. "Long-run growth uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 67-80.
    3. de Carvalho, Miguel & Rua, António, 2017. "Real-time nowcasting the US output gap: Singular spectrum analysis at work," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 185-198.
    4. Garratt, Anthony & Mitchell, James & Vahey, Shaun P., 2014. "Measuring output gap nowcast uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 268-279.

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