IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uct/uconnp/2005-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Potential Output and Output Gap and Macroeconomic Policy: The Case of Kenya

Author

Listed:
  • Angelica E. Njuguna

    (Kenyatta University and KIPPRA)

  • Stephen N. Karingi

    (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa)

  • Mwangi S. Kimenyi

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

Measuring the level of an economy.s potential output and output gap are essential in identifying a sustainable non-inflationary growth and assessing appropriate macroeconomic policies. The estimation of potential output helps to determine the pace of sustainable growth while output gap estimates provide a key benchmark against which to assess inflationary or disinflationary pressures suggesting when to tighten or ease monetary policies. These measures also help to provide a gauge in the determining the structural fiscal position of the government. This paper attempts to measure Kenya.s potential output and output gap using alternative statistical techniques and structural methods. Estimation of potential output and output gap using these techniques shows varied results. The estimated potential output growth using different methods gave a range of .2.9 to 2.4 percent for 2000 and a range of .0.8 to 4.6 for 2001. Although various methods produce varied results, they however provided a broad consensus on the over-all trend and performance of the Kenyan economy. This study found that firstly, potential output growth is declining over the recent time and secondly, the Kenyan economy is contracting in the recent years.

Suggested Citation

  • Angelica E. Njuguna & Stephen N. Karingi & Mwangi S. Kimenyi, 2005. "Measuring Potential Output and Output Gap and Macroeconomic Policy: The Case of Kenya," Working papers 2005-45, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2005-45
    Note: The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable research assistance provided by Paul Gachanja; and the helpful comments from the participants of the 8th Annual Conference on Econometric Modelling for Africa (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, July 2003), particularly from Adrian Pagan, John Muellbauer, Stephen Hall and Nelene Ehlers; also of John Randa from KIPPRA.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2005-45.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
    2. Dupasquier, Chantal & Guay, Alain & St-Amant, Pierre, 1999. "A Survey of Alternative Methodologies for Estimating Potential Output and the Output Gap," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 577-595, July.
    3. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    4. Harvey, A C & Jaeger, A, 1993. "Detrending, Stylized Facts and the Business Cycle," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(3), pages 231-247, July-Sept.
    5. Ms. Paula De Masi, 1997. "IMF Estimates of Potential Output: Theory and Practice," IMF Working Papers 1997/177, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Guy Debelle & James Vickery, 1998. "Is the Phillips Curve A Curve? Some Evidence and Implications for Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 74(227), pages 384-398, December.
    7. Douglas O. Staiger & James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1997. "How Precise Are Estimates of the Natural Rate of Unemployment?," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 195-246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1991. "Stochastic Trends and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 819-840, September.
    9. Slevin, Geraldine, 2001. "Potential Output and the Output Gap in Ireland," Research Technical Papers 5/RT/01, Central Bank of Ireland.
    10. Cécile Denis & Kieran Mc Morrow & Werner Röger, 2002. "Production function approach to calculating potential growth and output gaps - estimates for the EU Member States and the US," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 176, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    11. Beveridge, Stephen & Nelson, Charles R., 1981. "A new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the `business cycle'," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 151-174.
    12. Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
    13. Ms. Sweta Chaman Saxena & Ms. Valerie Cerra, 2000. "Alternative Methods of Estimating Potential Output and the Output Gap: An Application to Sweden," IMF Working Papers 2000/059, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Fabio Scacciavillani & Phillip Swagel, 2002. "Measures of potential output: an application to Israel," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(8), pages 945-957.
    15. Nelson, Charles R. & Plosser, Charles I., 1982. "Trends and random walks in macroeconmic time series : Some evidence and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 139-162.
    16. Chantal Dupasquier & Alain Guay & Pierre St-Amant, 1997. "A Comparison of Alternative Methodologies for Estimating Potential Output and the Output Gap," Staff Working Papers 97-5, Bank of Canada.
    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. Mahmood-ul-Hasan Khan, 2008. "Short Run Effects of an Unanticipated Change in Monetary Policy: Interpreting Macroeconomic Dynamics in Pakistan," SBP Research Bulletin, State Bank of Pakistan, Research Department, vol. 4, pages 1-30.
    2. Mthuli Ncube & Mthokozisi M. Tshuma, 2010. "Working Paper 113 - Monetary Policy Conduct Based on Nonlinear Taylor Rule: Evidence from South Africa," Working Paper Series 250, African Development Bank.
    3. Zheng, Jinghai & Bigsten, Arne & Hu, Angang, 2009. "Can China's Growth be Sustained? A Productivity Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 874-888, April.
    4. Emmanuel Ziramba & Bernie Zaaruka & Johanna Mumangeni & Charlotte Tjeriko & Jaungura Kaune, 2019. "The Output Gap and Potential Output in Namibia," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 11(5), pages 69-75.
    5. S. Adnan H. A. S. Bukhari & Safdar Ullah Khan, 2008. "Estimating Output Gap for Pakistan Economy: Structural and Statistical Approaches," SBP Research Bulletin, State Bank of Pakistan, Research Department, vol. 4, pages 31-60.

    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. Zsolt Darvas & Gábor Vadas, 2003. "Univariate Potential Output Estimations for Hungary," MNB Working Papers 2003/8, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary).
    2. S. Adnan H. A. S. Bukhari & Safdar Ullah Khan, 2008. "Estimating Output Gap for Pakistan Economy: Structural and Statistical Approaches," SBP Research Bulletin, State Bank of Pakistan, Research Department, vol. 4, pages 31-60.
    3. René Lalonde & Jennifer Page & Pierre St-Amant, 1998. "Une nouvelle méthode d'estimation de l'écart de production et son application aux États-Unis, au Canada et à l'Allemagne," Staff Working Papers 98-21, Bank of Canada.
    4. Cayen, Jean-Philippe & van Norden, Simon, 2005. "The reliability of Canadian output-gap estimates," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 373-393, December.
    5. Sergey Sinelnikov-Murylev & Sergey Drobyshevsky & Maria Kazakova & Michael Alexeev, 2016. "Decomposition of Russia's GDP Growth Rates," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 167P, pages 123-123.
    6. Mahmood-ul-Hasan Khan, 2008. "Short Run Effects of an Unanticipated Change in Monetary Policy: Interpreting Macroeconomic Dynamics in Pakistan," SBP Research Bulletin, State Bank of Pakistan, Research Department, vol. 4, pages 1-30.
    7. Mr. Andreas Billmeier, 2004. "Ghostbusting: Which Output Gap Measure Really Matters?," IMF Working Papers 2004/146, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Odile Chagny & Jörg Döpke, 2001. "Measures of the Output Gap in the Euro-Zone: An Empirical Assessment of Selected Methods," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 70(3), pages 310-332.
    9. Dupasquier, Chantal & Guay, Alain & St-Amant, Pierre, 1999. "A Survey of Alternative Methodologies for Estimating Potential Output and the Output Gap," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 577-595, July.
    10. Ángel Guillén & Gabriel Rodríguez, 2014. "Trend-cycle decomposition for Peruvian GDP: application of an alternative method," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 23(1), pages 1-44, December.
    11. Chantal Dupasquier & Alain Guay & Pierre St-Amant, 1997. "A Comparison of Alternative Methodologies for Estimating Potential Output and the Output Gap," Staff Working Papers 97-5, Bank of Canada.
    12. Alain Guay & Pierre St-Amant, 1996. "Do Mechanical Filters Provide a Good Approximation of Business Cycles?," Technical Reports 78, Bank of Canada.
    13. Pierre St-Amant & Simon van Norden, 1997. "Measurement of the Output Gap: A Discussion of Recent Research at the Bank of Canada," Technical Reports 79, Bank of Canada.
    14. Jean-Philippe Cayen & Simon van Norden, 2002. "La fiabilité des estimations de l'écart de production au Canada," Staff Working Papers 02-10, Bank of Canada.
    15. Weyerstraß, Klaus, 2001. "Methoden der Schätzung des gesamtwirtschaftlichen Produktionspotentials und der Produktionslücke," IWH Discussion Papers 142/2001, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    16. Ahsan ul Haq Satti & Wasim Shahid Malik, 2017. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 193-219.
    17. 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.
    18. Alain Guay & Pierre Saint-Amant, 2005. "Do the Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King Filters Provide a Good Approximation of Business Cycles?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 77, pages 133-155.
    19. Alessandro Cianci, 2016. "Disoccupazione strutturale in Italia e regole europee di bilancio," a/ Working Papers Series 1601, Italian Association for the Study of Economic Asymmetries, Rome (Italy).
    20. Andreas Billmeier, 2006. "Measuring a Roller Coaster: Evidence on the Finnish Output Gap," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 69-83, Autumn.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • N17 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    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:uct:uconnp:2005-45. 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: Mark McConnel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuctus.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.