Wavelet-based Core Inflation Measures: Evidence from Peru

Abstract

Under inflation targeting and other related monetary policy regimes, the identification of non-transitory in ation and forecasts about future inflation constitute key ingredients for monetary policy decisions. In practice, central banks perform these tasks using so-called "core inflation measures". In this paper we construct alternative core inflation measures using wavelet functions and multiresolution analysis (MRA), and then evaluate their relevance for monetary policy. The construction of wavelet-based core inflation measures (WIMs) is relatively new in the literature and their assessment has not been addressed formally, this paper being the first attempt to perform both tasks for the case of Peru. Another main contribution of this paper is that it proposes a VAR-based long-run criterion as an alternative criteria for evaluating core inflation measures. Evidence from Peru shows that WIMs are superior to official core inflation in terms of both the proposed criterion and forecast-based criteria.Core infl ation, wavelets, forecast, structural VAR