[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2023-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How We Missed the Inflation Surge: An Anatomy of Post-2020 Inflation Forecast Errors

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Christoffer Koch
  • Diaa Noureldin
Abstract
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.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Christoffer Koch & Diaa Noureldin, 2023. "How We Missed the Inflation Surge: An Anatomy of Post-2020 Inflation Forecast Errors," IMF Working Papers 2023/102, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2023/102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=533321
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mortensen, Dale T. & Pissarides, Christopher A., 1999. "Job reallocation, employment fluctuations and unemployment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1171-1228, Elsevier.
    2. Òscar Jordà & Alan M. Taylor, 2016. "The Time for Austerity: Estimating the Average Treatment Effect of Fiscal Policy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(590), pages 219-255, February.
    3. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Information Rigidity and the Expectations Formation Process: A Simple Framework and New Facts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2644-2678, August.
    4. Jason Furman, 2022. "Why Did (Almost) No One See the Inflation Coming?," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 57(2), pages 79-86, March.
    5. Nordhaus, William D, 1987. "Forecasting Efficiency: Concepts and Applications," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(4), pages 667-674, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ascari, Guido & Grazzini, Jakob & Massaro, Domenico, 2024. "Great Layoff, Great Retirement and Post-pandemic Inflation," CEPR Discussion Papers 19068, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Mr. Anil Ari & Mr. Carlos Mulas-Granados & Mr. Victor Mylonas & Mr. Lev Ratnovski & Wei Zhao, 2023. "One Hundred Inflation Shocks: Seven Stylized Facts," IMF Working Papers 2023/190, International Monetary Fund.

    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. Born, Benjamin & Enders, Zeno & Müller, Gernot J., 2023. "On FIRE, news, and expectations," Working Papers 42, German Research Foundation's Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour", Humboldt University Berlin.
    2. Döpke Jörg & Fritsche Ulrich & Waldhof Gabi, 2019. "Theories, Techniques and the Formation of German Business Cycle Forecasts : Evidence from a survey of professional forecasters," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 239(2), pages 203-241, April.
    3. Conrad, Christian & Lahiri, Kajal, 2024. "Heterogeneous Expectations among Professional Forecasters," Working Papers 0754, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    4. Deschamps, Bruno & Ioannidis, Christos & Ka, Kook, 2020. "High-frequency credit spread information and macroeconomic forecast revision," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 358-372.
    5. Lahiri, Kajal & Zhao, Yongchen, 2020. "The Nordhaus test with many zeros," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    6. Zeno Enders & Michael Kleemann & Gernot J. Muller, 2021. "Growth Expectations, Undue Optimism, and Short-Run Fluctuations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(5), pages 905-921, December.
    7. Berge, Travis J., 2018. "Understanding survey-based inflation expectations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 788-801.
    8. Berge, Travis J. & Chang, Andrew C. & Sinha, Nitish R., 2019. "Evaluating the conditionality of judgmental forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1627-1635.
    9. Iregui, Ana María & Núñez, Héctor M. & Otero, Jesús, 2021. "Testing the efficiency of inflation and exchange rate forecast revisions in a changing economic environment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 290-314.
    10. Jalles, João Tovar, 2017. "On the rationality and efficiency of inflation forecasts: Evidence from advanced and emerging market economies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 175-189.
    11. Raghav Goyal & Michael K. Adjemian, 2023. "Information rigidities in USDA crop production forecasts," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(5), pages 1405-1425, October.
    12. Andrew C. Chang & Trace J. Levinson, 2023. "Raiders of the lost high‐frequency forecasts: New data and evidence on the efficiency of the Fed's forecasting," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 88-104, January.
    13. Clements, Michael P., 2021. "Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 634-646.
    14. Dovern, Jonas & Fritsche, Ulrich & Loungani, Prakash & Tamirisa, Natalia, 2015. "Information rigidities: Comparing average and individual forecasts for a large international panel," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 144-154.
    15. Michael D Bauer & Carolin E Pflueger & Adi Sunderam, 2024. "Perceptions About Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(4), pages 2227-2278.
    16. Constantin Bürgi & Julio L. Ortiz, 2022. "Overreaction through Anchoring," CESifo Working Paper Series 10193, CESifo.
    17. Constantin Bürgi, 2020. "Expectation Formation and the Persistence of Shocks," Working Papers 2020-005, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting, revised Sep 2020.
    18. Constantin Burgi, 2016. "What Do We Lose When We Average Expectations?," Working Papers 2016-013, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    19. Clements, Michael P., 2018. "Are macroeconomic density forecasts informative?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 181-198.
    20. Zidong An & João Tovar Jalles & Prakash Loungani, 2018. "How well do economists forecast recessions?," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 100-121, June.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2023/102. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.