Explanatory power of inflation forecasts and their effect on the monetary policy of inflation targeting

The goal of this work is to prove poor explanatory power of inflation forecasts, which monetary policy regime of inflation targeting depends on. Actual inflation is significantly different from its forecast especially during unstable periods of economic cycle. The paper compares inflation forecasts and actual inflation in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, the United States and Great Britain from 1999 to 2011. Central banks use similar inflation targets and monetary policy regime in selected countries, however there are significant differences among them. The results for all the countries are almost identical despite these local specifics. The explanatory power (especially conditional forecasts) was found to be minimal. This hypothesis is proved by the regression analysis of actual inflation and inflation forecasts