IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2023-61.html

The Swaps Strike Back: Evaluating Expectations of One-Year Inflation

Author

Abstract

This study examines the forecasting performance of inflation swaps and survey-based expectations for one-year inflation. Conducting this exercise helps determine if one set of expectations can provide a cleaner signal about future inflation. The study finds that, overall, inflation swaps more frequently provide better forecasts of future inflation. Previous studies that found poor performance of swaps were strongly influenced by liquidity issues during the financial crisis and the pandemic. When these periods are excluded, swaps have superior predictive ability. Our analysis suggests that combining the two expectations can lead to even better forecasts. The optimal static combination is roughly an equal weighting of swaps and surveys. Alternatively, a dynamic smooth-transition regime switching model can also lead to superior performance and provide a clearer signal on expectations of future inflation. Recently, this measure has implied the Federal Reserve is expected to be closer to its inflation target over the next year than the surveys would suggest.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin Campbell & Anthony M. Diercks & Steven A. Sharpe & Daniel Soques, 2023. "The Swaps Strike Back: Evaluating Expectations of One-Year Inflation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-061, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2023-61
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2023.061
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2023061pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2023.061?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hibiki Ichiue & Tomonori Yuyama, 2009. "Using Survey Data to Correct the Bias in Policy Expectations Extracted from Fed Funds Futures," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(8), pages 1631-1647, December.
    2. Chen, Ren-Raw & Liu, Bo & Cheng, Xiaolin, 2010. "Pricing the term structure of inflation risk premia: Theory and evidence from TIPS," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 702-721, September.
    3. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Is the Phillips Curve Alive and Well after All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 197-232, January.
    4. Randal J. Verbrugge & Saeed Zaman, 2021. "Whose Inflation Expectations Best Predict Inflation?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2021(19), pages 1-7, October.
    5. Hansen, Peter Reinhard, 2005. "A Test for Superior Predictive Ability," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 365-380, October.
    6. Joseph Haubrich & George Pennacchi & Peter Ritchken, 2012. "Inflation Expectations, Real Rates, and Risk Premia: Evidence from Inflation Swaps," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(5), pages 1588-1629.
    7. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert & Wei, Min, 2007. "Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1163-1212, May.
    8. Jens H. E. Christensen & Jose A. Lopez & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2010. "Inflation Expectations and Risk Premiums in an Arbitrage‐Free Model of Nominal and Real Bond Yields," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(s1), pages 143-178, September.
    9. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Erratum to "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?"," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1849-1849, October.
    10. Kevin L. Kliesen, 2015. "How Accurate Are Measures of Long-Term Inflation Expectations?," Economic Synopses, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue 9.
    11. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2013. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    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. Valentin Burban & Bruno De Backer & Andreea Liliana Vladu, 2024. "Inflation (De-)Anchoring in the Euro Area," Working papers 965, Banque de France.
    2. Diego Bonelli & Berardino Palazzo & Ram Yamarthy, 2025. "Good inflation, bad inflation: implications for risky asset prices," Working Papers 2525, Banco de España.
    3. Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Van Robays, Ine & Cassinis, Maria Giulia, 2025. "Supply shocks and inflation: timely insights from financial markets," Working Paper Series 3096, European Central Bank.

    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. Andrew B. Martinez, 2020. "Extracting Information from Different Expectations," Working Papers 2020-008, The George Washington University, The Center for Economic Research.
    2. Lee, Seojin & Kim, Young Min, 2025. "The inflationary impact of oil price shock in Korea: The role of inflation expectations," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    3. Michael D. Bauer & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2020. "Interest Rates under Falling Stars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(5), pages 1316-1354, May.
    4. Szafranek, Karol, 2019. "Bagged neural networks for forecasting Polish (low) inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1042-1059.
    5. Randal J. Verbrugge & Saeed Zaman, 2021. "Whose Inflation Expectations Best Predict Inflation?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, vol. 2021(19), pages 1-7, October.
    6. S. Boragan Aruoba, 2014. "Term Structures of Inflation Expectations and Real Interest Rates: The Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policy," Staff Report 502, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    7. Marta Bañbura & Danilo Leiva-León & Jan-Oliver Menz, 2021. "Do inflation expectations improve model-based inflation Forecasts?," Working Papers 2138, Banco de España.
    8. Gimeno, Ricardo & Ibáñez, Alfredo, 2018. "The eurozone (expected) inflation: An option's eyes view," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 70-92.
    9. Grishchenko, Olesya V. & Vanden, Joel M. & Zhang, Jianing, 2016. "The informational content of the embedded deflation option in TIPS," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 1-26.
    10. Salisu, Afees A. & Ademuyiwa, Idris & Isah, Kazeem O., 2018. "Revisiting the forecasting accuracy of Phillips curve: The role of oil price," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 334-356.
    11. Marta Banbura & Andries van Vlodrop, 2018. "Forecasting with Bayesian Vector Autoregressions with Time Variation in the Mean," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-025/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Yiqun Gloria Chen, 2019. "Inflation, Inflation Expectations, and the Phillips Curve: Working Paper 2019-07," Working Papers 55501, Congressional Budget Office.
    13. Joshua C.C. Chan & Yong Song, 2018. "Measuring Inflation Expectations Uncertainty Using High‐Frequency Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1139-1166, September.
    14. Nguyen Duc Do, 2025. "Using a Wage–Price‐Setting Model to Forecast US Inflation," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 803-832, March.
    15. Michael D. Bauer, 2015. "Inflation Expectations and the News," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 11(2), pages 1-40, March.
    16. Olesya V. Grishchenko & Laura Wilcox, 2024. "Tale About Inflation Tails," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-028, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Carola Binder & Wesley Janson & Randal J. Verbrugge, 2019. "Thinking Outside the Box: Do SPF Respondents Have Anchored Inflation Expectations?," Working Papers 19-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    18. Olesya Grishchenko & Sarah Mouabbi & Jean‐Paul Renne, 2019. "Measuring Inflation Anchoring and Uncertainty: A U.S. and Euro Area Comparison," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(5), pages 1053-1096, August.
    19. Wright, Jonathan H., 2019. "Some observations on forecasting and policy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1186-1192.
    20. Julie Bennett & Michael T. Owyang, 2022. "On the Relative Performance of Inflation Forecasts," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 104(2), pages 131-148.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:fip:fedgfe:2023-61. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.