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Business and Economics > Forecasting

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Cover IMF Working Papers
How We Missed the Inflation Surge: An Anatomy of Post-2020 Inflation Forecast Errors
Mr. Christoffer Koch and Diaa Noureldin
This paper analyzes the inflation forecast errors over the period 2021Q1-2022Q3 using forecasts of core and headline inflation from the International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook for a large group of advanced and emerging market economies. The findings reveal evidence of forecast bias that worsened initially then subsided towards the end of the sample. There is also evidence of forecast oversmoothing indicating rigidity in forecast revision in the face of incoming information. Focusing on core inflation forecast errors in 2021, four factors provide a potential ex post explanation: a stronger-than-anticipated demand recovery; demand-induced pressures on supply chains; the demand shift from services to goods at the onset of the pandemic; and labor market tightness. Ex ante, we find that the size of the COVID-19 fiscal stimulus packages announced by different governments in 2020 correlates positively with core inflation forecast errors in advanced economies. This result hints at potential forecast inefficiency, but we caution that it hinges on the outcomes of a few, albeit large, economies.
Keywords:
Inflation; Inflation surge; Forecast error; COVID-19; Fiscal policy; core inflation error; forecasts of core and headline inflation; headline inflation from the International Monetary Fund; IMF working paper 2023/102; Fiscal stimulus; Labor markets; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Identifying Optimal Indicators and Lag Terms for Nowcasting Models
Jing Xie
Many central banks and government agencies use nowcasting techniques to obtain policy relevant information about the business cycle. Existing nowcasting methods, however, have two critical shortcomings for this purpose. First, in contrast to machine-learning models, they do not provide much if any guidance on selecting the best explantory variables (both high- and low-frequency indicators) from the (typically) larger set of variables available to the nowcaster. Second, in addition to the selection of explanatory variables, the order of the autoregression and moving average terms to use in the baseline nowcasting regression is often set arbitrarily. This paper proposes a simple procedure that simultaneously selects the optimal indicators and ARIMA(p,q) terms for the baseline nowcasting regression. The proposed AS-ARIMAX (Adjusted Stepwise Autoregressive Moving Average methods with exogenous variables) approach significantly reduces out-of-sample root mean square error for nowcasts of real GDP of six countries, including India, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Keywords:
Nowcasting; Mixed Frequency; Forecasting; Business Cycles; selection procedure; Annex I. AS-ARIMAX procedure; nowcasting method; evaluation comparison; baseline model; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Modeling and Forecasting Monthly Tourism Arrivals to Aruba Since COVID-19 Pandemic
Olga Bespalova
This paper improves short-term forecasting models of monthly tourism arrivals by estimating and evaluating a time-series model with exogenous regressors (ARIMA-X) using a case of Aruba, a small open tourism-dependent economy. Given importance of the US market for Aruba, it investigates informational value of Google Searches originating in the USA, flight capacity utilization on the US air-carriers, and per capita demand of the US consumers, given the volatility index in stock markets (VIX). It yields several insights. First, flight capacity is the best variable to account for the travel restrictions during the pandemic. Second, US real personal consumption expenditure becomes a more significnat predictor than income as the former better captured impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on the consumers’ behavior, while income boosted by the pandemic fiscal support was not fully directed to spending. Third, intercept correction improves the model in the estimation period. Finally, the pandemic changed econometric relationships between the tourism arrivals and their main determinants, and accuracy of the forecast models. Going forward, the analysts should re-estimate the models. Out-of-sample forecasts with 5 percent confidence intervals are produced for 18 months ahead.
Keywords:
Econometric Modeling; Forecasting; tourism; arrivals; tourist arrivals; Google Trends; flight capacity utiilization; load factor; time-series models; time-series econometrics; arima; Aruba; Covid-19; Pandemic; tourism arrival; arrivals to Aruba; Aruba tourism authority; time-series model; IMF working papers; consumption expenditure; Capacity utilization; Unemployment rate; Caribbean
Cover IMF Working Papers
Biases in Survey Inflation Expectations: Evidence from the Euro Area
Mr. Jiaqian Chen, Lucyna Gornicka, and Vaclav Zdarek
This paper documents five facts about inflation expectations in the euro area. First, individual inflation forecasts overreact to individual news. Second, the cross-section average of individual forecasts of inflation underreact to shocks initially, but overreacts in the medium term. Third, disagreement about future inflation increases in response to news when the current inflation is high, and declines when inflation is low, consistent with a zero lower bound of expectations. Fourth, overreaction of individual inflation forecasts to news increased after the global financial crisis (GFC). Fifth, the reaction of average expectations (and of actual inflation) to shocks became more muted post-GFC in the euro area, but not in the U.S.
Keywords:
expectations formation; surveys of expectations; informational rigidities; inflation expectation; survey inflation expectation; responses of inflation expectation; forecasts of inflation; Inflation; Zero lower bound; Oil production; Supply shocks; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Inflation Expectations and the Supply Chain
Elías Albagli, Mr. Francesco Grigoli, and Emiliano Luttini
We show that firms rely on price changes observed along their supply chain to form expectations about aggregate inflation, and that these expectations have a complete pass-through to sales prices. Leveraging a unique dataset on Chilean firms merging expectation surveys and records from the VAT and customs registries, we document that changes in prices at which firms purchase inputs inform their forecasts of the economy’s inflation. This is the case even if changes in input costs do not determine the inflation outcome. These findings reject the full-information rational-expectations hypothesis and are consistent with firms’ disagreement about future inflation and inattention to macroeconomic news, which we document for Chile. Our results from a firm-level Phillips’ curve estimation suggest that firms’ beliefs about inflation are a key determinant for their price-setting decisions. Therefore, we argue that the channel we highlight in this paper has the potential to lead to dispersion in inflation expectations, price dispersion, and weaken the expectation channel of policies.
Keywords:
Forecast disagreement; inflation expectations; information frictions; Phillips Curve; rational inattention; supply chain; inflation expectation; inflation outcome; expectation channel; price inflation; supply chain inflation; Inflation; Export prices; Import prices; Consumer price indexes
Cover IMF Working Papers
Housing Boom and Headline Inflation: Insights from Machine Learning
Yang Liu, Di Yang, and Mr. Yunhui Zhao
Inflation has been rising during the pandemic against supply chain disruptions and a multi-year boom in global owner-occupied house prices. We present some stylized facts pointing to house prices as a leading indicator of headline inflation in the U.S. and eight other major economies with fast-rising house prices. We then apply machine learning methods to forecast inflation in two housing components (rent and owner-occupied housing cost) of the headline inflation and draw tentative inferences about inflationary impact. Our results suggest that for most of these countries, the housing components could have a relatively large and sustained contribution to headline inflation, as inflation is just starting to reflect the higher house prices. Methodologically, for the vast majority of countries we analyze, machine-learning models outperform the VAR model, suggesting some potential value for incorporating such models into inflation forecasting.