IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scandj/v122y2020i1p369-390.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Real‐Time Fiscal Forecasting Using Mixed‐Frequency Data

Author

Listed:
  • Stylianos Asimakopoulos
  • Joan Paredes
  • Thomas Warmedinger

Abstract

The sovereign debt crisis has increased the importance of monitoring budgetary execution. We employ real‐time data using a mixed data sampling (MiDaS) methodology to demonstrate how budgetary slippages can be detected early on. We show that in spite of using real‐time data, the year‐end forecast errors diminish significantly when incorporating intra‐annual information. Our results show the benefits of forecasting aggregates via subcomponents, in this case total government revenue and expenditure. Our methodology could significantly improve fiscal surveillance and could therefore be an important part of the European Commission's model toolkit.

Suggested Citation

  • Stylianos Asimakopoulos & Joan Paredes & Thomas Warmedinger, 2020. "Real‐Time Fiscal Forecasting Using Mixed‐Frequency Data," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(1), pages 369-390, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:122:y:2020:i:1:p:369-390
    DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12338
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12338
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/sjoe.12338?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jacopo Cimadomo, 2012. "Fiscal Policy in Real Time," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(2), pages 440-465, June.
    2. Pedregal, Diego J. & Pérez, Javier J., 2010. "Should quarterly government finance statistics be used for fiscal surveillance in Europe?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 794-807, October.
    3. Michael Artis & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2001. "Fiscal forecasting: The track record of the IMF, OECD and EC," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 4(1), pages 20-36.
    4. S. Borağan Aruoba, 2008. "Data Revisions Are Not Well Behaved," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(2‐3), pages 319-340, March.
    5. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2006. "Predicting volatility: getting the most out of return data sampled at different frequencies," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 59-95.
    6. Helmut Lütkepohl, 2010. "Forecasting Aggregated Time Series Variables: A Survey," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2010(2), pages 1-26.
    7. Ghysels, Eric & Wright, Jonathan H., 2009. "Forecasting Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 504-516.
    8. Nikita Perevalov & Philipp Maier, 2010. "On the Advantages of Disaggregated Data: Insights from Forecasting the U.S. Economy in a Data-Rich Environment," Staff Working Papers 10-10, Bank of Canada.
    9. Filip Keereman, 1999. "The track record of the Commission forecasts," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 137, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    10. Kuzin, Vladimir & Marcellino, Massimiliano & Schumacher, Christian, 2011. "MIDAS vs. mixed-frequency VAR: Nowcasting GDP in the euro area," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 529-542.
    11. Athanasios Orphanides, 2001. "Monetary Policy Rules Based on Real-Time Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 964-985, September.
    12. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    13. Asimakopoulos, Panagiotis & Asimakopoulos, Stylianos & Kourogenis, Nikolaos & Tsiritakis, Emmanuel, 2017. "Time-Disaggregated Dividend–Price Ratio and Dividend Growth Predictability in Large Equity Markets," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(5), pages 2305-2326, October.
    14. Michael P. Clements & Ana Beatriz Galvao, 2009. "Forecasting US output growth using leading indicators: an appraisal using MIDAS models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(7), pages 1187-1206.
    15. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2004. "The MIDAS Touch: Mixed Data Sampling Regression Models," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt9mf223rs, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    16. Onorante, Luca & Pedregal, Diego J. & Pérez, Javier J. & Signorini, Sara, 2010. "The usefulness of infra-annual government cash budgetary data for fiscal forecasting in the euro area," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 98-119, January.
    17. Andrew Hughes Hallett & Moritz Kuhn & Thomas Warmedinger, 2012. "The gains from early intervention in Europe: Fiscal surveillance and fiscal planning using cash data," European Journal of Government and Economics, Europa Grande, vol. 1(1), pages 44-65, June.
    18. Andreou, Elena & Ghysels, Eric & Kourtellos, Andros, 2010. "Regression models with mixed sampling frequencies," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(2), pages 246-261, October.
    19. Claudia Foroni & Massimiliano Marcellino & Christian Schumacher, 2015. "Unrestricted mixed data sampling (MIDAS): MIDAS regressions with unrestricted lag polynomials," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(1), pages 57-82, January.
    20. Perez, Javier J., 2007. "Leading indicators for euro area government deficits," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 259-275.
    21. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2003. "Macroeconomic forecasting in the Euro area: Country specific versus area-wide information," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-18, February.
    22. Paredes, Joan & Pedregal, Diego J. & Pérez, Javier J., 2014. "Fiscal policy analysis in the euro area: Expanding the toolkit," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 800-823.
    23. Lars Forsberg & Eric Ghysels, 2007. "Why Do Absolute Returns Predict Volatility So Well?," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 31-67.
    24. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    25. Mark W. Watson & James H. Stock, 2004. "Combination forecasts of output growth in a seven-country data set," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 405-430.
    26. Alberto Baffigi & Roberto Golinelli & Giuseppe Parigi, 2002. "Real-time GDP forecasting in the euro area," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 456, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saidjon Shiralievich Tavarov & Alexander Sidorov & Zsolt Čonka & Murodbek Safaraliev & Pavel Matrenin & Mihail Senyuk & Svetlana Beryozkina & Inga Zicmane, 2023. "Control of Operational Modes of an Urban Distribution Grid under Conditions of Uncertainty," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-18, April.
    2. Robert Ambrisko, 2022. "Nowcasting Macroeconomic Variables Using High-Frequency Fiscal Data," Working Papers 2022/5, Czech National Bank.
    3. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    4. Marcell Göttert & Robert Lehmann, 2021. "Tax Revenue Forecast Errors: Wrong Predictions of the Tax Base or the Elasticity?," CESifo Working Paper Series 9148, CESifo.
    5. Lahiri, Kajal & Yang, Cheng, 2022. "Boosting tax revenues with mixed-frequency data in the aftermath of COVID-19: The case of New York," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 545-566.
    6. Barbara Batóg & Jacek Batóg, 2021. "Regional Government Revenue Forecasting: Risk Factors of Investment Financing," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-15, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Warmedinger, Thomas & Paredes, Joan & Asimakopoulos, Stylianos, 2013. "Forecasting fiscal time series using mixed frequency data," Working Paper Series 1550, European Central Bank.
    2. Qian Chen & Xiang Gao & Shan Xie & Li Sun & Shuairu Tian & Shigeyuki Hamori, 2021. "On the Predictability of China Macro Indicator with Carbon Emissions Trading," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-24, February.
    3. Hanan Naser, 2015. "Estimating and forecasting Bahrain quarterly GDP growth using simple regression and factor-based methods," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 449-479, September.
    4. Zhang, Yue-Jun & Wang, Jin-Li, 2019. "Do high-frequency stock market data help forecast crude oil prices? Evidence from the MIDAS models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 192-201.
    5. Ghysels, Eric & Ozkan, Nazire, 2015. "Real-time forecasting of the US federal government budget: A simple mixed frequency data regression approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1009-1020.
    6. Galvão, Ana Beatriz, 2013. "Changes in predictive ability with mixed frequency data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 395-410.
    7. Claudia Foroni & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2013. "A survey of econometric methods for mixed-frequency data," Economics Working Papers ECO2013/02, European University Institute.
    8. Santiago Etchegaray Alvarez, 2022. "Proyecciones macroeconómicas con datos en frecuencias mixtas. Modelos ADL-MIDAS, U-MIDAS y TF-MIDAS con aplicaciones para Uruguay," Documentos de trabajo 2022004, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    9. J. Isaac Miller, 2014. "Mixed-frequency Cointegrating Regressions with Parsimonious Distributed Lag Structures," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(3), pages 584-614.
    10. Degiannakis, Stavros & Filis, George, 2018. "Forecasting oil prices: High-frequency financial data are indeed useful," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 388-402.
    11. Kenichiro McAlinn, 2021. "Mixed‐frequency Bayesian predictive synthesis for economic nowcasting," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1143-1163, November.
    12. Götz, Thomas B. & Hecq, Alain & Smeekes, Stephan, 2016. "Testing for Granger causality in large mixed-frequency VARs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 193(2), pages 418-432.
    13. Schumacher, Christian, 2016. "A comparison of MIDAS and bridge equations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 257-270.
    14. Bec, Frédérique & Mogliani, Matteo, 2015. "Nowcasting French GDP in real-time with surveys and “blocked” regressions: Combining forecasts or pooling information?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1021-1042.
    15. Kitlinski, Tobias & an de Meulen, Philipp, 2015. "The role of targeted predictors for nowcasting GDP with bridge models: Application to the Euro area," Ruhr Economic Papers 559, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    16. Kuzin, Vladimir & Marcellino, Massimiliano & Schumacher, Christian, 2011. "MIDAS vs. mixed-frequency VAR: Nowcasting GDP in the euro area," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 529-542.
    17. Dhaene, Geert & Wu, Jianbin, 2020. "Incorporating overnight and intraday returns into multivariate GARCH volatility models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 217(2), pages 471-495.
    18. Jacopo Cimadomo, 2016. "Real-Time Data And Fiscal Policy Analysis: A Survey Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 302-326, April.
    19. Diego J. Pedregal & Javier J. Pérez & Antonio Sánchez Fuentes, 2014. "A Tookit to strengthen Government," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 211(4), pages 117-146, December.
    20. Ryan T. Ball & Eric Ghysels, 2018. "Automated Earnings Forecasts: Beat Analysts or Combine and Conquer?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4936-4952, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:122:y:2020:i:1:p:369-390. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9442 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.