We distinguish between three different ways of using real-time data to estimate forecasting equations and argue that the most frequently used approach should generally be avoided. The point is illustrated with a model that uses monthly observations of industrial production, employment, and retail sales to predict real GDP growth. When the model is estimated using our preferred method, its out-of-sample forecasting performance is clearly superior to that obtained using conventional estimation, and compares favorably with that of the Blue-Chip consensus.
Greater data availability has been coupled with developments in statistical theory and economic theory to allow more elaborate and complicated models to be entertained. These include factor models, DSGE models, restricted vector autoregressions, and non-linear models.
Short-term Forecasting for Empirical Economists seeks to close the gap between research and applied short-term forecasting. The authors review some of the key theoretical results and empirical findings in the recent literature on short-term forecasting, and translate these findings into economically meaningful techniques to facilitate their widespread application to compute short-term forecasts in economics, and to monitor the ongoing business cycle developments in real time.
The highly prized ability to make financial plans with some certainty about the future comes from the core fields of economics. In recent years the availability of more data, analytical tools of greater precision, and ex post studies of business decisions have increased demand for information about economic forecasting. Volumes 2A and 2B, which follows Nobel laureate Clive Granger's Volume 1 (2006), concentrate on two major subjects. Volume 2A covers innovations in methodologies, specifically macroforecasting and forecasting financial variables. Volume 2B investigates commercial applications, with sections on forecasters' objectives and methodologies. Experts provide surveys of a large range of literature scattered across applied and theoretical statistics journals as well as econometrics and empirical economics journals. The Handbook of Economic Forecasting Volumes 2A and 2B provide a unique compilation of chapters giving a coherent overview of forecasting theory and applications in one place and with up-to-date accounts of all major conceptual issues. - Focuses on innovation in economic forecasting via industry applications - Presents coherent summaries of subjects in economic forecasting that stretch from methodologies to applications - Makes details about economic forecasting accessible to scholars in fields outside economics
Economic forecasting is a key ingredient of decision making in the public and private sectors. This book provides the necessary tools to solve real-world forecasting problems using time-series methods. It targets undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in public and private institutions interested in applied economic forecasting.
Forecasts guide decisions in all areas of economics and finance. Economic policy makers base their decisions on business cycle forecasts, investment decisions of firms are based on demand forecasts, and portfolio managers try to outperform the market based on financial market forecasts. Forecasts extract relevant information from the past and help to reduce the inherent uncertainty of the future. The topic of this special issue of the Journal of Economics and Statistics is the theory and practise of forecasting and forecast evaluation and an overview of the state of the art of forecasting.
The book's contributors assess the performance of economic forecasting methods, argue that data can be better exploited through model and forecast combination, and advocate for models that are adaptive and perform well in the presence of nonlinearity and structural change.
Presents researches in linear and nonlinear modelling of economic and financial time-series. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of financial and economic dynamics in various aspects using modern financial econometric methods. It also presents and discusses research findings and their implications.
Forecasting in the presence of structural breaks and model uncertainty are active areas of research with implications for practical problems in forecasting. This book addresses forecasting variables from both Macroeconomics and Finance, and considers various methods of dealing with model instability and model uncertainty when forming forecasts.
