IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-14-00895.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

It is not structural breaks that earn average forecasts their fame

Author

Listed:
  • Dirk Ulbricht

    (institut für finanzdienstleistungen (iff))

Abstract

Structural change is a major challenge to the applied forecaster and a potential source of large forecast errors. Large forecasting competitions demonstrate the success of combined forecasts of simple linear models over forecasting devices that endogenously model structural change. Thereby, most studies look at the average performance over time, not at or around structural changes. However, is it really reliability in the presence of structural breaks that gives average forecasts an edge over their competitors? An analysis of real-time forecasts of UK inflation indicates that it is not their break performance that earns combined forecasts their fame.

Suggested Citation

  • Dirk Ulbricht, 2016. "It is not structural breaks that earn average forecasts their fame," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(2), pages 1250-1259.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00895
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2016/Volume36/EB-16-V36-I2-P122.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2006. "A comparison of direct and iterated multistep AR methods for forecasting macroeconomic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1-2), pages 499-526.
    2. Tian, Jing & Anderson, Heather M., 2014. "Forecast combinations under structural break uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 161-175.
    3. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    4. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Evidence on Structural Instability in Macroeconomic Time Series Relations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(1), pages 11-30, January.
    5. Luca Benati & George Kapetanios, 2003. "Structural Breaks in Inflation Dynamics," Computing in Economics and Finance 2003 169, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    7. Egginton, Don M. & Pick, Andreas & Vahey, Shaun P., 2002. "'Keep it real!': a real-time UK macro data set," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 15-20, September.
    8. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Chevillon, Guillaume, 2016. "Multistep forecasting in the presence of location shifts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 121-137.
    2. M. Hashem Pesaran & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2006. "Forecasting Time Series Subject to Multiple Structural Breaks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 1057-1084.
    3. Todd E. Clark & Michael W. McCracken, 2006. "Forecasting of small macroeconomic VARs in the presence of instabilities," Research Working Paper RWP 06-09, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    4. Narayan, Seema & Smyth, Russell, 2015. "The financial econometrics of price discovery and predictability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 380-393.
    5. Vicente Esteve & Manuel Navarro-Ibáñez & María A. Prats, 2013. "The present value model of US stock prices revisited: long-run evidence with structural breaks, 1871-2010," Working Papers 04/13, Instituto Universitario de Análisis Económico y Social.
    6. Benati, Luca, 2007. "Drift and breaks in labor productivity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(8), pages 2847-2877, August.
    7. Koo, Bonsoo & Seo, Myung Hwan, 2015. "Structural-break models under mis-specification: Implications for forecasting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 188(1), pages 166-181.
    8. Terasvirta, Timo, 2006. "Forecasting economic variables with nonlinear models," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 413-457, Elsevier.
    9. Smith, Simon C. & Timmermann, Allan & Zhu, Yinchu, 2019. "Variable selection in panel models with breaks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 212(1), pages 323-344.
    10. Anthony Garratt & Shaun P Vahey, 2006. "UK Real-Time Macro Data Characteristics," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(509), pages 119-135, February.
    11. Kocenda, Evzen, 2005. "Beware of breaks in exchange rates: Evidence from European transition countries," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 307-324, September.
    12. Rossi, Barbara, 2013. "Advances in Forecasting under Instability," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1203-1324, Elsevier.
    13. Hännikäinen Jari, 2017. "Selection of an Estimation Window in the Presence of Data Revisions and Recent Structural Breaks," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, January.
    14. Mohitosh Kejriwal, 2020. "A Robust Sequential Procedure for Estimating the Number of Structural Changes in Persistence," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(3), pages 669-685, June.
    15. Raffaella Giacomini & Barbara Rossi, 2015. "Forecasting in Nonstationary Environments: What Works and What Doesn't in Reduced-Form and Structural Models," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 207-229, August.
    16. Esteve, Vicente & Navarro-Ibáñez, Manuel & Prats, María A., 2020. "Stock prices, dividends, and structural changes in the long-term: The case of U.S," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    17. Ke Yang & Langnan Chen, 2014. "Realized Volatility Forecast: Structural Breaks, Long Memory, Asymmetry, and Day-of-the-Week Effect," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 14(3), pages 345-392, September.
    18. Geweke, John & Jiang, Yu, 2011. "Inference and prediction in a multiple-structural-break model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 163(2), pages 172-185, August.
    19. Ramzi Issa & Robert Lafrance & John Murray, 2008. "The turning black tide: energy prices and the Canadian dollar," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 737-759, August.
    20. Giorgio Canarella & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller & Stephen K. Pollard, 2019. "Unemployment rate hysteresis and the great recession: exploring the metropolitan evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 61-79, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    real-time experiment; forecast combination; breaks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling
    • C2 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00895. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.