Core Inflation and Inflation Targeting in a Developing Economy

This paper is concerned with inflation targeting as a potential monetary policy objective in a developing economy. Using data from Nicaragua, it first studies the extent to which the Consumer Price Index (CPI) could be used to formulate short-run inflation targets. It is found that due to the particular cross-sectional properties of the relative-price distributions, the rate of change in the CPI may not be the best index for this purpose. As a consequence, the paper is also concerned with the choice of alternative indicators of inflation and their statistical properties. These alternative measures are ranked according to their ability to forecast the rate of change in the price level. Finally, the relationship between the dispersion and skewness of the relative-price distribution and generalized inflation is studied using time series analysis.