Proyecciones 2015 del staff del BCE podrían iluminar –o confundir– orientación a futuro

Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret

Bruce Kasman, David Hensley y Joseph Lupton de JP Morgan nos recuerdan que el comunicado de política monetaria del Banco Central Europeo (BCE) de este jueves 5 noviembre incluirá las previsiones económicas del staff del banco central, que por primera vez se extenderán hasta 2015. Sin embargo, advierten, éstas pueden confundir, en vez de iluminar, la orientación a futuro del banco central. Esto es porque las proyecciones del staff –que no necesariamente son compartidas por Mario Draghi u otros miembros del Consejo de Gobierno– tienden a revertirse rápidamente a la media histórica y sus estimaciones de crecimiento potencial son pesimistas. En consecuencia, explican, es probable que proyecten menor holgura y mayor inflación que de lo que espera Draghi, quien, en cambio, ha estado diciendo que el Consejo de Gobierno espera un periodo prolongado de inflación baja y que las tasas de política monetaria permanezcan en niveles iguales o más bajas durante un periodo de tiempo extendido.

Bruce Kasman, David Hensley y Joseph Lupton (Global Data Watch, 29 noviembre 2013):

Central bank forecasts for the path of the economy and rates have become a powerful monetary policy tool in a world in which the lower rate bound has been in place. With the ECB having dipped its toes into forward guidance this year, it would seem natural to look to next week’s release of its 2015 outlook as an opportunity to gain new information about the ECB’s policy intentions. Unfortunately, the framework under which the ECB prepares and presents its forecasts will make it difficult to gain a clear policy signal from this exercise.

In contrast to the Fed or BoE, the ECB’s economic projections are owned by the staff rather than the policy committee. This would not matter if the two groups shared the same views. However, there appears to be a significant gap between the staff and ECB president Draghi. Whereas Draghi gives the impression the region will experience “a prolonged period of low inflation,” the staff relies on inflation models that embed a strong mean-reverting tendency. The staff also tends to share the European Commission’s extremely negative view of the supply side of the economy. With the commission forecasting a negative potential growth rate for the periphery in 2014-15, its regional estimate of potential growth is just 0.5% to 0.7% oya.

Consequently, the staff forecast is likely to show slack diminishing and inflation drifting higher over 2014-15. This will pose a communication challenge for Draghi next week as it may weaken his “low-for-long” forward guidance. In time, we expect actual inflation outcomes to prove the staff forecast wrong, with inflation remaining closer to 1% over the coming year. However, this will take time to be realized.