What Is in Your Output Gap? Unified Framework & Decomposition into Observables

Download or read book What Is in Your Output Gap? Unified Framework & Decomposition into Observables written by Michal Andrle and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper discusses several popular methods to estimate the ‘output gap’. It provides a unified, natural concept for the analysis, and demonstrates how to decompose the output gap into contributions of observed data on output, inflation, unemployment, and other variables. A simple bar-chart of contributing factors, in the case of multi-variable methods, sharpens the intuition behind the estimates and ultimately shows ‘what is in your output gap.’ The paper demonstrates how to interpret effects of data revisions and new data releases for output gap estimates (news effects) and how to obtain more insight into real-time properties of estimators.