TIPS: The Trend Inflation Projection System and Estimation Results

Koji Takahashi

No 16-E-18, Bank of Japan Working Paper Series from Bank of Japan

Abstract: In practice, trend inflation is often defined as a common factor extracted from observed inflation rates by removing cyclical effects from business cycles as well as other transitory distortions. Trend inflation can also be interpreted as the infinitely long-term inflation rate expected by private economic agents. If we assume that the central bank's inflation target policy is fully credible, trend inflation will converge to the target inflation rate in the long run. In the short run, however, trend inflation and the target rate can differ due to adaptive, or backward-looking, expectations and changes in the extent to which the inflation target is credible. Based on these considerations, this paper proposes a simple new methodology for projecting trend inflation, labelled the Trend Inflation Projection System (TIPS), where trend inflation is expressed as the weighted average of two components: an adaptive component, where a common trend is extracted from several core inflation measures, and a forward-looking component, namely the target inflation rate. In addition, the weights are allowed to vary over time to capture changes in the degree to which economic agents believe in the inflation target. The estimation results show that trend inflation in Japan increased dramatically in the first quarter of 2013, when the BOJ raised the target inflation rate, and has continued to rise gradually since then. However, since the second half of 2014, medium- to long-term inflation expectations have shifted downward, meaning that inflation expectations may be formed in a more adaptive manner than in the model. Furthermore, decomposition of the consumer price index (CPI, all items less fresh food) based on the estimated model indicates that although CPI inflation rose from the beginning of 2013 due to the increase in trend inflation, it has decreased again since the second half of 2014 due to transitory factors such as the decline in oil prices.

Keywords: Core Inflation; Trend Inflation; Inflation Target (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 E31 E37 E58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/wps_rev/wps_2016/data/wp16e18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boj:bojwps:wp16e18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bank of Japan Working Paper Series from Bank of Japan Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bank of Japan ().