Using wavelets to measure core inflation: The case of New Zealand

This paper uses wavelets to develop a core inflation measure for inflation targeting central banks. The analysis is applied to the case of New Zealand - the country with the longest history of explicit inflation targeting. We compare the performance of our proposed measure against some popular alternatives. Our measure does well at identifying a reliable medium-term trend in inflation. It also has comparable forecasting performance to standard benchmarks. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.