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Superior Forecasts of the U.S. Unemployment Rate Using a Nonparametric Method

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  • Amos Golan

    (American University, Berkeley)

  • Jeffrey M. Perloff

    (University of California, Berkeley)

Abstract

We use a nonlinear, nonparametric method to forecast unemployment rates. This method is an extension of the nearest-neighbor method but uses a higher-dimensional simplex approach. We compare these forecasts with several linear and nonlinear parametric methods based on the work of Montgomery et al. (1998) and Carruth et al. (1998). Our main result is that, due to the nonlinearity in the data-generating process, the nonparametric method outperforms many other well-known models, even when these models use more information. This result holds for forecasts based on quarterly and on monthly data. 2004 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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  • Amos Golan & Jeffrey M. Perloff, 2004. "Superior Forecasts of the U.S. Unemployment Rate Using a Nonparametric Method," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 433-438, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:86:y:2004:i:1:p:433-438
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    1. Alan A. Carruth & Mark A. Hooker & Andrew J. Oswald, 1998. "Unemployment Equilibria And Input Prices: Theory And Evidence From The United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 621-628, November.
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    9. Agnon, Yehuda & Golan, Amos & Shearer, Matthew, 1999. "Nonparametric, nonlinear, short-term forecasting: theory and evidence for nonlinearities in the commodity markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 293-299, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Mihaela Simionescu & Mirel Daniel Simionescu, 2017. "The Connection between Foreign Direct Investment and Unemployment Rate in the United States," Working papers Globalization - Economic, Social and Moral Implications, April 2017 18, Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
    2. Christian Hutter & Enzo Weber, 2015. "Constructing a new leading indicator for unemployment from a survey among German employment agencies," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(33), pages 3540-3558, July.
    3. M. E. Baskakova & V. N. Baskakov & E. A. Yanenko, 2022. "Medium-Term Forecast of Government Spending on the Unemployment Social Protection System in Russia in the Conditions of Economic Recession," Studies on Russian Economic Development, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 45-54, February.
    4. Pär Österholm, 2010. "Improving Unemployment Rate Forecasts Using Survey Data," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 16-26, Spring.
    5. Theodore Panagiotidis, 2010. "An Out-of-Sample Test for Nonlinearity in Financial Time Series: An Empirical Application," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 121-132, August.
    6. D'Amuri, Francesco & Marcucci, Juri, 2009. "‘Google it!’ Forecasting the US unemployment rate with a Google job search index," ISER Working Paper Series 2009-32, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    7. Barnichon, Regis & Garda, Paula, 2016. "Forecasting unemployment across countries: The ins and outs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 165-183.
    8. Ullrich Heilemann & Herman Stekler, 2010. "Perspectives on Evaluating Macroeconomic Forecasts," Working Papers 2010-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    9. Dalla, Violetta & Giraitis, Liudas & Robinson, Peter M., 2020. "Asymptotic theory for time series with changing mean and variance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(2), pages 281-313.
    10. Magnus Gustavsson & Pär Österholm, 2010. "The presence of unemployment hysteresis in the OECD: what can we learn from out-of-sample forecasts?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 779-792, June.
    11. Olmedo, Elena, 2011. "Is there chaos in the Spanish labour market?," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 44(12), pages 1045-1053.
    12. D’Amuri, Francesco & Marcucci, Juri, 2017. "The predictive power of Google searches in forecasting US unemployment," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 801-816.
    13. Elena Olmedo, 2014. "Forecasting Spanish Unemployment Using Near Neighbour and Neural Net Techniques," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 43(2), pages 183-197, February.
    14. Pablo Guerróon‐Quintana & Molin Zhong, 2023. "Macroeconomic forecasting in times of crises," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 295-320, April.
    15. Regis Barnichon & Christopher J. Nekarda, 2012. "The Ins and Outs of Forecasting Unemployment: Using Labor Force Flows to Forecast the Labor Market," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 43(2 (Fall)), pages 83-131.
    16. Francisco Lasso-Valderrama & Héctor M. Zárate-Solano, 2019. "Forecasting the Colombian Unemployment Rate Using Labour Force Flows," Borradores de Economia 1073, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.

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