Phillips Curve Inflation Forecasts

James H. Stock and Mark W. Watson

No 14322, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper surveys the literature since 1993 on pseudo out-of-sample evaluation of inflation forecasts in the United States and conducts an extensive empirical analysis that recapitulates and clarifies this literature using a consistent data set and methodology. The literature review and empirical results are gloomy and indicate that Phillips curve forecasts (broadly interpreted as forecasts using an activity variable) are better than other multivariate forecasts, but their performance is episodic, sometimes better than and sometimes worse than a good (not naïve) univariate benchmark. We provide some preliminary evidence characterizing successful forecasting episodes.

JEL-codes: C53 E37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-ecm, nep-ets, nep-for and nep-mac
Date: 2008-09
Note: EFG ME
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