Evaluating Core Inflation Measures for Brazil

This article presents a brief survey about core inflation and shows the first results obtained in the computation of such indicator for the Brazilian IPCA for the period from January/1996 to ay/2000. The performance of five alternative measures of core inflation (exclusion method, symmetric trimmed mean, symmetric trimmed mean with smoothed series, weighted median and double weighted indicator) is evaluated and compared. The preliminary results show that the double weighted measure and the 20% trimmed mean with smoothed series performed better.