Resampling a time‐series process: A method of estimating the probabilities associated with alternative plans for protecting pensions against inflation

Abstract Any pension protection formula that falls short of complete compensation for inflation has associated with it a time‐series of probability distributions of future purchasing power losses. A method of estimating those distributions is proposed and applied. The method is based on the idea of representing inflation as a multivariate time‐series process and using a model fitted to historical data to generate a large artificial sample of ‘realized’ inflation sequences by means of a bootstrapping procedure. The purchasing power losses under a given protection plan can then be simulated for each inflation sequence and the sample distributions calculated.