IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/08-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Core measures of inflation as predictors of total inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Theodore M. Crone
  • N. Neil K. Khettry
  • Loretta J. Mester
  • Jason A. Novak

Abstract

Two rationales offered for policymakers' focus on core measures of inflation as a guide to underlying inflation are that core inflation omits food and energy prices, which are thought to be more volatile than other components, and that core inflation is thought to be a better predictor of total inflation over time horizons of import to policymakers. The authors' investigation finds little support for either rationale. They find that food and energy prices are not the most volatile components of inflation and that depending on which inflation measure is used, core inflation is not necessarily the best predictor of total inflation. However, they do find that combining CPI and PCE inflation measures can lead to statistically significant more accurate forecasts of each inflation measure, suggesting that each measure includes independent information that can be exploited to yield better forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • Theodore M. Crone & N. Neil K. Khettry & Loretta J. Mester & Jason A. Novak, 2008. "Core measures of inflation as predictors of total inflation," Working Papers 08-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:08-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/2008/wp08-9.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reichlin, Lucrezia & Forni, Mario & Cristadoro, Riccardo & Veronese, Giovanni, 2001. "A Core Inflation Index for the Euro Area," CEPR Discussion Papers 3097, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Michael F. Bryan & Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1994. "Measuring Core Inflation," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 195-219, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ricardo Reis & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Relative Goods' Prices, Pure Inflation, and the Phillips Correlation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 128-157, July.
    4. 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.
    5. Alan S. Blinder & Ricardo Reis, 2005. "Understanding the Greenspan standard," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 11-96.
    6. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    7. Mark A. Wynne, 2008. "Core inflation: a review of some conceptual issues," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(May), pages 205-228.
    8. Robert W. Rich & Charles Steindel, 2005. "A review of core inflation and an evaluation of its measures," Staff Reports 236, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1989. "New Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 351-409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Raffaella Giacomini & Halbert White, 2006. "Tests of Conditional Predictive Ability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1545-1578, November.
    11. Alan S. Blinder & Ricardo Reis, 2005. "Understanding the Greenspan standard," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 11-96.
    12. Cogley, Timothy, 2002. "A Simple Adaptive Measure of Core Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(1), pages 94-113, February.
    13. 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.
    14. Brent Meyer & Mehmet Pasaogullari, 2010. "Simple ways to forecast inflation: what works best?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Dec.
    15. Michael T. Kiley, 2008. "Estimating the common trend rate of inflation for consumer prices and consumer prices excluding food and energy prices," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-38, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Marlene Amstad & Simon M. Potter, 2009. "Real time underlying inflation gauges for monetary policymakers," Staff Reports 420, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    17. Smith, Julie K, 2004. "Weighted Median Inflation: Is This Core Inflation?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 253-263, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Alan K. Detmeister, 2011. "The usefulness of core PCE inflation measures," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-56, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Gamber, Edward N. & Smith, Julie K. & Eftimoiu, Raluca, 2015. "The dynamic relationship between core and headline inflation," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 38-53.
    3. N. Neil K. Khettry & Loretta J. Mester, 2006. "Core inflation as a predictor of total inflation," Research Rap Special Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Apr.
    4. Hervé Le Bihan & Danilo Leiva-León & Matías Pacce, 2023. "Underlying inflation and asymetric risks," Working Papers 2319, Banco de España.
    5. Priyanka Sahu, 2021. "A Study on the Dynamic Behaviour of Headline Versus Core Inflation: Evidence from India," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 22(6), pages 1574-1593, December.
    6. Juan Angel Garcia & Aubrey Poon, 2022. "Inflation trends in Asia: implications for central banks [Are Phillips curves useful for forecasting inflation?]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(3), pages 671-700.
    7. Brent Meyer & Guhan Venkatu, 2012. "Trimmed-mean inflation statistics: just hit the one in the middle," Working Papers (Old Series) 1217, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    8. Marlene Amstad & Simon M. Potter & Robert W. Rich, 2014. "The FRBNY staff underlying inflation gauge: UIG," Staff Reports 672, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. Faust, Jon & Wright, Jonathan H., 2013. "Forecasting Inflation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2-56, Elsevier.
    10. Stefano Eusepi & Bart Hobijn & Andrea Tambalotti, 2011. "CONDI: A Cost-of-Nominal-Distortions Index," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 53-91, July.
    11. Dowd, Kevin & Cotter, John & Loh, Lixia, 2011. "U.S. Core Inflation: A Wavelet Analysis," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(4), pages 513-536, September.
    12. Junhee Lee & Joonhyuk Song, 2011. "Oil and Macroeconomy: The Case of Korea," NBER Chapters, in: Commodity Prices and Markets, pages 263-290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Marlene Amstad & Simon M. Potter & Robert W. Rich, 2017. "The New York Fed Staff Underlying Inflation Gauge (UIG)," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue 23-2, pages 1-32.
    14. Bharat Trehan, 2015. "Survey Measures of Expected Inflation and the Inflation Process," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(1), pages 207-222, February.
    15. Robert W. Rich & Charles Steindel, 2007. "A comparison of measures of core inflation," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 13(Dec), pages 19-38.
    16. Junhee Lee & Joonhyuk Song, 2009. "Nature of Oil Price Shocks and Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 15306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Pincheira, Pablo & Selaive, Jorge & Nolazco, Jose Luis, 2016. "The Evasive Predictive Ability of Core Inflation," MPRA Paper 68704, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Stephen G Cecchetti & Richhild Moessner, 2008. "Commodity prices and inflation dynamics," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    19. Michael T. Kiley, 2008. "Estimating the common trend rate of inflation for consumer prices and consumer prices excluding food and energy prices," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-38, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Francesco Ravazzolo & Shaun P Vahey, 2010. "Measuring Core Inflation in Australia with Disaggregate Ensembles," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Renée Fry & Callum Jones & Christopher Kent (ed.),Inflation in an Era of Relative Price Shocks, Reserve Bank of Australia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation (Finance);

    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:fedpwp:08-9. 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: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.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.