Are Weekly Inflation Forecasts Informative?

Are weekly inflation forecasts informative? Although several central banks review and discuss monetary policy issues on a bi-weekly basis, there have been no attempts by analysts to construct systematic estimates of core inflation that supports such a decision-making schedule. The timeliness of news releases are recognized to be an important information source in real-time estimation. We incorporate real-time information from macroeconomic releases and revisions into our weekly updates of monthly Swiss core inflation using a common factor procedure. The weekly estimates for Swiss core inflation show that it is worthwhile to update the forecast at least twice a month. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Department of Economics, University of Oxford, 2008.