COMPARISON OF ARIMA, EXPONENTIAL SMOOTHING, AND CHEN-SINGH FUZZY MODELS FOR INFLATION FORECASTING IN ASEAN COUNTRIES

This study aims to (i) develop predictive models using statistical and fuzzy approaches, and (ii) evaluate their forecasting performance. The data were obtained from www.investing.com for the period 1961 to 2017 and focus on five ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The statistical models used are Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Exponential Smoothing, while the fuzzy approaches include Chen and Singh fuzzy time series models. The dataset was divided into training and test sets in a 75%-25% proportion. ARIMA models capture trends and autocorrelations in time series data, while Exponential Smoothing uses exponentially weighted averages. Fuzzy models are designed to handle uncertainty and linguistic patterns in data. The results show that Singh’s fuzzy model yields the lowest error for Indonesia, while exponential smoothing and Chen fuzzy time series model demonstrate the same lowest error for Malaysia. For the Philippines, exponential smoothing is most accurate, whereas ARIMA and Singh fuzzy time series achieve the smallest error for Singapore. For Thailand, exponential smoothing and ARIMA perform equally well. However, the robustness of the forecasting model cannot be determined from either statistical or fuzzy methods, highlighting the challenge in determining the most robust model for inflation in the ASEAN region. The 75%-25% data split may also limit the generalizability of the findings. This study contributes a rare cross-country comparison of statistical and fuzzy forecasting methods in the ASEAN context. It highlights the importance of model selection based on country-specific inflation behavior and provides insights for improving forecasting strategies in macroeconomic applications.