Forecasting Inflation Applying ARIMA Model with GARCH Innovation: The Case of Pakistan

Purpose: The research aims to build a suitable model for the conditional mean and conditional variance for forecasting the rate of inflation in Pakistan by summarizing the properties of the series and characterizing its salient features. Design/Methodology/Approach: For this purpose, Pakistan’s Inflation Rate is based upon the Consumer Price Index (CPI), ranging from January 1962 to December 2019 has been analyzed. Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test that was used for testing the stationarity of the series. The ARIMA modeling technique is a conditional mean and GARCH model for conditional variance. Models are selected on AIC and BIC model selection criteria. The estimating and forecasting ability of three ARIMA models with the GARCH (2,2) model has been compared to capture the possible nonlinearity present in the data. To depict the possible asymmetric effect in the conditional variance, two asymmetric GARCH models, EGARCH and TGARCH models have been applied. Findings: Based on statistical loss functions, GARCH (2,2) model is the best variance model for this series. The empirical results reveal that the performance of model-2 is best for all the three variance models. However, the GARCH model is the best as the variance model for this series. This shows that the asymmetric effect invariance is not so important for the rate of inflation in Pakistan.  Implications/Originality/Value: The current study was based on the least considered variables and the pioneer in testing the complex relationship through the ARIMA model with GARCH innovation.