Simulating Inflation Forecasting in Real-Time

Download or read book Simulating Inflation Forecasting in Real-Time written by Mr.Jens R. Clausen and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper simulates out-of-sample inflation forecasting for Germany, the UK, and the US. In contrast to other studies, we use output gaps estimated with unrevised real-time GDP data. This exercise assumes an information set similar to that available to a policymaker at a given point in time since GDP data is subject to sometimes substantial revisions. In addition to using real-time datasets for the UK and the US, we employ a dataset for real-time German GDP data not used before. We find that Phillips curves based on ex post output gaps generally improve the accuracy of inflation forecasts compared to an AR(1) forecast but that real-time output gaps often do not help forecasting inflation. This raises the question how operationally useful certain output gap estimates are for forecasting inflation.