The Accuracy Analysis of Inflation Rate Forecasts in Euro Area

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to provide a comparative analysis of the accuracy associated to the inflation forecasts for euro area made by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). On the horizon from 2000 to 2013, IMF provided significantly more accurate inflation rate forecasts compared to OECD, according to Diebold-Mariano test and U1 Theil’s statistic value. Moreover, the predictions provided by the two institutions are better than the naïve ones. All the predictions do not provide valuable information for future decisional process.

Keywords

• forecasts
• accuracy
• directional accuracy
• U Theil’s statistic
• Diebold-Mariano test
• inflation rate.