Forecasting Economic Time Series

The prediction of future events and developments is an exciting and perhaps mysterious task, often associated with the aura of prophets and seers instead of probabilistic models and computer screens. The reality of macroeconomic forecasting, however, is quite mundane. Predictions of macroeconomic aggregates play an important role in the decision making of private enterprises, central banks, and governments. In general, forecasts become less popular if they turn out to be inaccurate ex post, and the postwar history of macroeconomic forecasting has had its share of disappointments. For instance, in the early 1980's, economists tested inflation forecasts taken over the previous 20 years and found that the forecasts were poor, partly as a result of the oil price shocks in the 1970's. A recent study (Croushore, 1998) with data up to 1996 provides a more favorable assessment of the quality of inflation forecasts.