Bibliographic record
Abstract
When there is uncertainty about estimates of the margin of unused capacity in the economy, examining a range of inflation indicators may help in assessing the balance of risks regarding the outlook for inflation. This paper tests a wide range of observable variables for their leading-indicator properties with respect to core inflation, including: commodity prices, cost indicators, measures of capacity pressures in labour and product markets, and components of the consumer price index (CPI) itself. After a preliminary screening of indicators using Granger causality tests, estimated bivariate indicator models generate post-sample static forecasts one quarter ahead and two quarters ahead over the period 1995(Q1)–1999(Q1). A ridge regression technique is used to optimally combine selected bivariate forecasts into multivariate forecasts. The root-mean-squared errors of both the bivariate and multivariate forecasts are compared with those of benchmark models—a Phillips curve, an autoregressive model, and two naive models. The results show that several indicator models generate lower forecast errors than the benchmark models over the post-sample period. Several CPI components, as well as the Bank of Canada commodity price index in U.S. dollars, the industrial product price index for electrical products, the average prices for resale housing in four major cities, and the ratio of unfilled orders to shipments in manufacturing are among the best predictors of core inflation. The paper also briefly discusses the limitations of indicator models, including the possibility that predictions from such models may not tell us much about the underlying pressure of demand on production capacity or the fundamental trend in inflation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".