IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pre/wpaper/201512.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forecasting the US CPI: Does Nonlinearity Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Marcos Álvarez-Díaz

    (Department of Economics, University of Vigo, Galicia, Spain)

  • Rangan Gupta

    (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria)

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to predict, both in-sample and out-of-sample, the consumer price index (CPI) of the United States (US) economy based on monthly data covering the period of 1980:1-2013:12, using a variety of linear (random walk (RW), autoregressive (AR) and seasonally-adjusted autoregressive moving average (SARIMA)) and nonlinear (artificial neural network (ANN) and genetic programming (GP)) univariate models. Our results show that, while the SARIMA model is superior relative to other linear and nonlinear models, as it tends to produce smaller forecast errors; statistically, these forecasting gains are not significant relative to higher-order AR and nonlinear models, though simple benchmarks like the RW and AR(1) models are statistically outperformed. Overall, we show that in terms of forecasting the US CPI, accounting for nonlinearity does not necessarily provide us with any statistical gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcos Álvarez-Díaz & Rangan Gupta, 2015. "Forecasting the US CPI: Does Nonlinearity Matter?," Working Papers 201512, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pre:wpaper:201512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Binner, Jane M. & Elger, C. Thomas & Nilsson, Birger & Tepper, Jonathan A., 2006. "Predictable non-linearities in U.S. inflation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 323-328, December.
    2. Neely, Christopher & Weller, Paul & Dittmar, Rob, 1997. "Is Technical Analysis in the Foreign Exchange Market Profitable? A Genetic Programming Approach," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 405-426, December.
    3. Luca Benati & Paolo Surico, 2008. "Evolving U.S. Monetary Policy and The Decline of Inflation Predictability," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 634-646, 04-05.
    4. Colin Fyfe & John Paul Marney & Heather Tarbert, 1999. "Technical analysis versus market efficiency - a genetic programming approach," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 183-191.
    5. Norman R. Swanson & Halbert White, 1997. "A Model Selection Approach To Real-Time Macroeconomic Forecasting Using Linear Models And Artificial Neural Networks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 540-550, November.
    6. Álvarez-Díaz, Marcos & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Gupta, Rangan, 2014. "Detecting predictable non-linear dynamics in Dow Jones Islamic Market and Dow Jones Industrial Average indices using nonparametric regressions," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 22-35.
    7. Ireland, Peter N., 2004. "A method for taking models to the data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1205-1226, March.
    8. Gary Koop & Dimitris Korobilis, 2012. "Forecasting Inflation Using Dynamic Model Averaging," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(3), pages 867-886, August.
    9. Brock, W.A. & Dechert, W.D. & LeBaron, B. & Scheinkman, J.A., 1995. "A Test for Independence Based on the Correlation Dimension," Working papers 9520, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    10. M. Ali Choudhary & Adnan Haider, 2012. "Neural network models for inflation forecasting: an appraisal," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(20), pages 2631-2635, July.
    11. Binner, J.M. & Tino, P. & Tepper, J. & Anderson, R. & Jones, B. & Kendall, G., 2010. "Does money matter in inflation forecasting?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(21), pages 4793-4808.
    12. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Modeling inflation after the crisis," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 173-220.
    13. Evzen Kocenda, 2001. "An Alternative To The Bds Test: Integration Across The Correlation Integral," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 337-351.
    14. Hylleberg, S. & Engle, R. F. & Granger, C. W. J. & Yoo, B. S., 1990. "Seasonal integration and cointegration," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 215-238.
    15. Soofi, Abdol S. & Cao, Liangyue, 1999. "Nonlinear deterministic forecasting of daily Peseta-Dollar exchange rate," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 175-180, February.
    16. Robert Engle, 2001. "GARCH 101: The Use of ARCH/GARCH Models in Applied Econometrics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 157-168, Fall.
    17. Zhang, Gioqinang & Hu, Michael Y., 1998. "Neural network forecasting of the British Pound/US Dollar exchange rate," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 495-506, August.
    18. Marcos Álvarez-Díaz & Alberto Álvarez, 2005. "Genetic multi-model composite forecast for non-linear prediction of exchange rates," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 643-663, October.
    19. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    20. Beenstock, Michael & Szpiro, George, 2002. "Specification search in nonlinear time-series models using the genetic algorithm," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 811-835, May.
    21. Szpiro, George G, 1997. "A Search for Hidden Relationships: Data Mining with Genetic Algorithms," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 10(3), pages 267-277, August.
    22. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B., 2006. "Another look at measures of forecast accuracy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 679-688.
    23. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    24. James Theiler & Stephen Eubank, 1993. "Don't Bleach Chaotic Data," Working Papers 93-05-026, Santa Fe Institute.
    25. Serena Ng & Pierre Perron, 2001. "LAG Length Selection and the Construction of Unit Root Tests with Good Size and Power," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1519-1554, November.
    26. McAdam, Peter & McNelis, Paul, 2005. "Forecasting inflation with thick models and neural networks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 848-867, September.
    27. Zhang, Guoqiang & Eddy Patuwo, B. & Y. Hu, Michael, 1998. "Forecasting with artificial neural networks:: The state of the art," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 35-62, March.
    28. Yoshio Kajitani & A. Ian Mcleod & Keith W. Hipel, 2005. "Forecasting nonlinear time series with feed-forward neural networks: a case study of Canadian lynx data," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 105-117.
    29. Alvarez-Diaz, Marcos & Caballero Miguez, Gonzalo, 2008. "The quality of institutions: A genetic programming approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 161-169, January.
    30. Jane Binner & Rakesh Bissoondeeal & Thomas Elger & Alicia Gazely & Andrew Mullineux, 2005. "A comparison of linear forecasting models and neural networks: an application to Euro inflation and Euro Divisia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 665-680.
    31. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2013. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    32. Cao, Liangyue & Soofi, Abdol S., 1999. "Nonlinear deterministic forecasting of daily dollar exchange rates," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 421-430, October.
    33. Ferson, Wayne & Nallareddy, Suresh & Xie, Biqin, 2013. "The “out-of-sample” performance of long run risk models," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 537-556.
    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. Vasilios Plakandaras & Periklis Gogas & Theophilos Papadimitriou & Rangan Gupta, 2017. "The Informational Content of the Term Spread in Forecasting the US Inflation Rate: A Nonlinear Approach," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(2), pages 109-121, March.
    2. Nyoni, Thabani, 2019. "Modeling and forecasting CPI in Myanmar: An application of ARIMA models," MPRA Paper 92420, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Nyoni, Thabani, 2019. "Analyzing CPI dynamics in Italy," MPRA Paper 92421, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Denis Shibitov & Mariam Mamedli, 2021. "Forecasting Russian Cpi With Data Vintages And Machine Learning Techniques," Bank of Russia Working Paper Series wps70, Bank of Russia.
    5. Nyoni, Thabani, 2019. "Predicting consumer price index in Saudi Arabia," MPRA Paper 92422, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Nyoni, Thabani, 2019. "Modeling and forecasting CPI in Iran: A univariate analysis," MPRA Paper 92454, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Nyoni, Thabani, 2019. "Modeling and forecasting CPI in Mauritius," MPRA Paper 92423, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Szafranek, Karol, 2019. "Bagged neural networks for forecasting Polish (low) inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1042-1059.
    2. Marcos Álvarez-Díaz & Alberto Álvarez, 2002. "Predicción No-Lineal De Tipos De Cambio: Algoritmos Genéticos, Redes Neuronales Y Fusión De Datos," Working Papers 0205, Universidade de Vigo, Departamento de Economía Aplicada.
    3. Marcos Álvarez-Díaz & Alberto Álvarez, 2003. "Predicción No-Lineal De Tipos De Cambio: Algoritmos Genéticos, Redes Neuronales Y Fusión De Datos," Working Papers 0301, Universidade de Vigo, Departamento de Economía Aplicada.
    4. Barkan, Oren & Benchimol, Jonathan & Caspi, Itamar & Cohen, Eliya & Hammer, Allon & Koenigstein, Noam, 2023. "Forecasting CPI inflation components with Hierarchical Recurrent Neural Networks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1145-1162.
    5. Jying-Nan Wang & Jiangze Du & Chonghui Jiang & Kin-Keung Lai, 2019. "Chinese Currency Exchange Rates Forecasting with EMD-Based Neural Network," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-15, October.
    6. Tea Šestanović & Josip Arnerić, 2021. "Neural network structure identification in inflation forecasting," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 62-79, January.
    7. LeBaron, Blake, 2003. "Non-Linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance,: Philip Hans Franses and Dick van Dijk, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, 296 pp., Paperback, ISBN 0-521-77965-0, $33, [UK pound]22.95, [," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 751-752.
    8. Franses,Philip Hans & Dijk,Dick van, 2000. "Non-Linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521779654, January.
    9. Lucio Sarno & Giorgio Valente, 2009. "Exchange Rates and Fundamentals: Footloose or Evolving Relationship?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(4), pages 786-830, June.
    10. Jan G. De Gooijer & Rob J. Hyndman, 2005. "25 Years of IIF Time Series Forecasting: A Selective Review," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 12/05, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    11. Marcos Álvarez-Díaz & Manuel González-Gómez & María Soledad Otero-Giráldez, 2018. "Forecasting International Tourism Demand Using a Non-Linear Autoregressive Neural Network and Genetic Programming," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 1(1), pages 1-17, September.
    12. Barbara Rossi, 2019. "Forecasting in the presence of instabilities: How do we know whether models predict well and how to improve them," Economics Working Papers 1711, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2021.
    13. Bajo-Rubio, Oscar & Sosvilla-Rivero, Simon & Fernandez-Rodriguez, Fernando, 2001. "Asymmetry in the EMS: New evidence based on non-linear forecasts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 451-473, March.
    14. Andreas Karatahansopoulos & Georgios Sermpinis & Jason Laws & Christian Dunis, 2014. "Modelling and Trading the Greek Stock Market with Gene Expression and Genetic Programing Algorithms," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(8), pages 596-610, December.
    15. Franses,Philip Hans & Dijk,Dick van & Opschoor,Anne, 2014. "Time Series Models for Business and Economic Forecasting," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521520911.
    16. Oscar Claveria & Enric Monte & Salvador Torra, 2014. "“A multivariate neural network approach to tourism demand forecasting”," AQR Working Papers 201410, University of Barcelona, Regional Quantitative Analysis Group, revised May 2014.
    17. Michael H. Breitner & Christian Dunis & Hans-Jörg Mettenheim & Christopher Neely & Georgios Sermpinis & Georgios Sermpinis & Charalampos Stasinakis & Konstantinos Theofilatos & Andreas Karathanasopoul, 2014. "Inflation and Unemployment Forecasting with Genetic Support Vector Regression," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(6), pages 471-487, September.
    18. Muhammad Nadim Hanif & Khurrum S. Mughal & Javed Iqbal, 2018. "A Thick ANN Model for Forecasting Inflation," SBP Working Paper Series 99, State Bank of Pakistan, Research Department.
    19. Macias, Paweł & Stelmasiak, Damian & Szafranek, Karol, 2023. "Nowcasting food inflation with a massive amount of online prices," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 809-826.
    20. Marcos à lvarez-Díaz & Manuel González-Gómez & María Soledad Otero-Giráldez, 2019. "Estimating the economic impact of a political conflict on tourism: The case of the Catalan separatist challenge," Tourism Economics, , vol. 25(1), pages 34-50, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Linear; Nonlinear; Forecasting; Consumer Price Index;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C45 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Neural Networks and Related Topics
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    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:pre:wpaper:201512. 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: Rangan Gupta (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decupza.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.