Inflation Forecasting, Relative Price Variability and Skewness

We aim to forecast U.K. inflation out-of-sample. Our study uses disaggregated quarterly UK consumption data from 1964:1 to 2004:3. A major finding of our analysis is that inflation forecasts of long time horizons of 1.5-2 years are significantly improved if a measure of symmetry of the price distribution is incorporated into the forecast equation. In contrast, the inclusion of price variability leads to deterioration in inflation forecasting performance.