[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/ecopap/0258.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monitoring short-term labour cost developments in the European Union: which indicators to trust?

Author

Listed:
  • Gilles Mourre
  • Michael Thiel
Abstract
This paper reviews the available indicators in the European Union to monitor short-term labour cost developments, i.e. of quarterly frequency, with a special focus on the euro area. It clarifies concepts, provides information on availability and compares the indicators against various statistical criteria, their historical track record and their predictive capacities. The paper mainly focuses on the supply side, particularly considering labour cost developments in terms of risks for price stability. It is found that no single indicator can be considered clearly superior and able to replace the others without loss of information, as each indicator concentrates on a specific dimension of labour costs and is affected by statistical flaws. The assessment of short-term wage developments should reasonably be based on the broadest available set of statistics so as to get a balanced and careful view. The empirical analysis shows that when forecasting core inflation one-step ahead for the euro area as a whole, the labour cost index and the ECFIN wage indicator display the higher predictive accuracy. Moreover, composite labour cost indicators (encompassing at least two indicators) clearly outperform any single wage indicator. Compensation per employee empirically appears the best, albeit weak, leading wage indicator of private consumption.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles Mourre & Michael Thiel, 2006. "Monitoring short-term labour cost developments in the European Union: which indicators to trust?," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 258, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    • Handle: RePEc:euf:ecopap:0258
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/pages/publication612_en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Franck Sédillot & Nigel Pain, 2003. "Indicator Models of Real GDP Growth in Selected OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 364, OECD Publishing.
    2. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    3. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Forecasting inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-335, October.
    4. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2003. "Macroeconomic forecasting in the Euro area: Country specific versus area-wide information," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-18, February.
    5. Moser, Gabriel & Rumler, Fabio & Scharler, Johann, 2007. "Forecasting Austrian inflation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 470-480, May.
    6. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    7. Roma, Moreno & Skudelny, Frauke & Benalal, Nicholai & Diaz del Hoyo, Juan Luis & Landau, Bettina, 2004. "To aggregate or not to aggregate? Euro area inflation forecasting," Working Paper Series 374, European Central Bank.
    8. Rünstler, Gerhard & Sédillot, Franck, 2003. "Short-term estimates of euro area real GDP by means of monthly data," Working Paper Series 276, European Central Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hanan Naser, 2015. "Estimating and forecasting Bahrain quarterly GDP growth using simple regression and factor-based methods," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 449-479, September.
    2. Esteves, Paulo Soares, 2013. "Direct vs bottom–up approach when forecasting GDP: Reconciling literature results with institutional practice," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 416-420.
    3. Duarte, Claudia & Rua, Antonio, 2007. "Forecasting inflation through a bottom-up approach: How bottom is bottom?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 941-953, November.
    4. Moser, Gabriel & Rumler, Fabio & Scharler, Johann, 2007. "Forecasting Austrian inflation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 470-480, May.
    5. Chalmovianský, Jakub & Porqueddu, Mario & Sokol, Andrej, 2020. "Weigh(t)ing the basket: aggregate and component-based inflation forecasts for the euro area," Working Paper Series 2501, European Central Bank.
    6. Guido Bulligan & Roberto Golinelli & Giuseppe Parigi, 2010. "Forecasting monthly industrial production in real-time: from single equations to factor-based models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 303-336, October.
    7. Antipa, Pamfili & Barhoumi, Karim & Brunhes-Lesage, Véronique & Darné, Olivier, 2012. "Nowcasting German GDP: A comparison of bridge and factor models," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 864-878.
    8. Rua, António, 2017. "A wavelet-based multivariate multiscale approach for forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 581-590.
    9. Sandra Eickmeier & Christina Ziegler, 2008. "How successful are dynamic factor models at forecasting output and inflation? A meta-analytic approach," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 237-265.
    10. Hendry, David F. & Hubrich, Kirstin, 2006. "Forecasting economic aggregates by disaggregates," Working Paper Series 589, European Central Bank.
    11. Dr. Marco Huwiler & Daniel Kaufmann, 2013. "Combining disaggregate forecasts for inflation: The SNB's ARIMA model," Economic Studies 2013-07, Swiss National Bank.
    12. Hendry, David F. & Hubrich, Kirstin, 2011. "Combining Disaggregate Forecasts or Combining Disaggregate Information to Forecast an Aggregate," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(2), pages 216-227.
    13. Daniel Grenouilleau, 2006. "The Stacked Leading Indicators Dynamic Factor Model: A Sensitivity Analysis of Forecast Accuracy using Bootstrapping," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 249, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    14. Frédérick Demers & Annie De Champlain, 2005. "Forecasting Core Inflation in Canada: Should We Forecast the Aggregate or the Components?," Staff Working Papers 05-44, Bank of Canada.
    15. Hubrich, Kirstin, 2005. "Forecasting euro area inflation: Does aggregating forecasts by HICP component improve forecast accuracy?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 119-136.
    16. Ibarra, Raul, 2012. "Do disaggregated CPI data improve the accuracy of inflation forecasts?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1305-1313.
    17. repec:onb:oenbwp:y::i:91:b:1 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Giuseppe Parigi & Roberto Golinelli, 2007. "The use of monthly indicators to forecast quarterly GDP in the short run: an application to the G7 countries," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 77-94.
    19. Thiago Carlomagno Carlo & Emerson Fernandes Marçal, 2016. "Forecasting Brazilian inflation by its aggregate and disaggregated data: a test of predictive power by forecast horizon," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(50), pages 4846-4860, October.
    20. Alex Ilek, 2007. "Aggregation versus Disaggregation - What can we learn from it?," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2007.02b, Bank of Israel.
    21. Andrejs Bessonovs & Olegs Krasnopjorovs, 2021. "Short-term inflation projections model and its assessment in Latvia," Baltic Journal of Economics, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 184-204.

    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:euf:ecopap:0258. 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: ECFIN INFO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dg2ecbe.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.