@article { , title = {Can urban coffee consumption help predict US inflation?}, abstract = {Motivated by the importance of coffee to Americans and the significance of the coffee subsector to the US economy, we pursue three notable innovations. First, we augment the traditional Phillips curve model with the coffee price as a predictor, and show that the resulting model outperforms the traditional variant in both in-sample and out-of-sample predictability of US inflation. Second, we demonstrate the need to account for the inherent statistical features of predictors such as persistence, endogeneity, and conditional heteroskedasticity effects when dealing with US inflation. Consequently, we offer robust illustrations to show that the choice of estimator matters for improved US inflation forecasts. Third, the proposed augmented Phillips curve also outperforms time series models such as autoregressive integrated moving average and the fractionally integrated version for both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts. Our results show that augmenting the traditional Phillips curve with the urban coffee price will produce better forecast results for US inflation only when the statistical effects are captured in the estimation process. Our results are robust to alternative measures of inflation, different data frequencies, higher order moments, multiple data samples and multiple forecast horizons.}, doi = {10.1002/for.2589}, eissn = {1099-131X}, issn = {0277-6693}, issue = {7}, journal = {Journal of Forecasting}, note = {This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Salisu, AA, Swaray, R, Adediran, IA. Can urban coffee consumption help predict U.S. inflation?. Journal of Forecasting. 2019, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/for.2589. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.}, pages = {649-668}, publicationstatus = {Published}, publisher = {Wiley}, url = {https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1378827}, volume = {38}, keyword = {Business and Logistics, USA, Phillips curve, Coffee price, Inflation forecasts, Forecast evaluation}, year = {2019}, author = {Salisu, Afees A and Swaray, Raymond and Adediran, Idris A} }