8/2016 Nicolas Reigl. Forecasting the Estonian Rate of Inflation using Factor Models
Working Papers of Eesti Pank 8/2016
The paper presents forecasts of the headline and core inflation in Estonia with factor models in a recursive pseudo out-of-sample framework. The factors are constructed with a principal component analysis and are then incorporated into vector autoregressive forecasting models. The analyses show that certain factor-augmented vector autoregressive models improve upon a simple univariate autoregressive model but the forecasting gains are small and not systematic. Models with a small number of factors extracted from a large dataset are best suited for forecasting headline inflation. In contrast models with a larger number of factors extracted from a small dataset outperform the benchmark model in the forecast of Estonian headline and, especially, core inflation.
JEL classification: C32, C38, C53
DOI: 10.23656/25045520/82016/0002
Keywords: Factor models, factor-augmented vector autoregressive models, factor analysis, principal components, inflation forecasting, forecast evaluation, Estonia
E-mail: nicolas.reigl@eestipank.ee
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of Eesti Pank or the Eurosystem.
