IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cam/camdae/0814.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forecasting Random Walks Under Drift Instability

Author

Listed:
  • Pesaran, M.H.
  • Pick, A.

Abstract

This paper considers forecast averaging when the same model is used but estimation is carried out over different estimation windows. It develops theoretical results for random walks when their drift and/or volatility are subject to one or more structural breaks. It is shown that compared to using forecasts based on a single estimation window, averaging over estimation windows leads to a lower bias and to a lower root mean square forecast error for all but the smallest of breaks. Similar results are also obtained when observations are exponentially down-weighted, although in this case the performance of forecasts based on exponential down-weighting critically depends on the choice of the weighting coefficient. The forecasting techniques are applied to monthly inflation series of 21 OECD countries and it is found that average forecasting methods in general perform better than using forecasts based on a single estimation window.

Suggested Citation

  • Pesaran, M.H. & Pick, A., 2008. "Forecasting Random Walks Under Drift Instability," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0814, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
  • Handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0814
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/research-files/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe0814.pdf
    File Function: Working Paper Version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Todd E. Clark & Michael W. McCracken, 2010. "Averaging forecasts from VARs with uncertain instabilities," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 5-29, January.
    2. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    3. Clements, Michael P. & Hendry, David F., 2006. "Forecasting with Breaks," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 605-657, Elsevier.
    4. Todd E. Clark & Michael W. McCracken, 2009. "Improving Forecast Accuracy By Combining Recursive And Rolling Forecasts," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 363-395, May.
    5. Burdekin, Richard C K & Siklos, Pierre L, 1999. "Exchange Rate Regimes and Shifts in Inflation Persistence: Does Nothing Else Matter?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 31(2), pages 235-247, May.
    6. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Schuermann, Til & Smith, L. Vanessa, 2009. "Forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 642-675, October.
    7. Katrin Assenmacher-Wesche & M. Hashem Pesaran, 2008. "Forecasting the Swiss Economy Using Vecx* Models: an Exercise in Forecast Combination Across Models and Observation Windows," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 203(1), pages 91-108, January.
    8. Clemen, Robert T., 1989. "Combining forecasts: A review and annotated bibliography," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 559-583.
    9. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    10. Branch, William A. & Evans, George W., 2006. "A simple recursive forecasting model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 158-166, May.
    11. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    12. Robalo Marques, Carlos, 2004. "Inflation persistence: facts or artefacts?," Working Paper Series 371, European Central Bank.
    13. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 2007. "Selection of estimation window in the presence of breaks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 134-161, March.
    14. 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.
    15. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    16. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    17. Carlos Robalo Marques, 2005. "Inflation persistence: facts or artefacts?," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    18. Gardner, Everette Jr., 2006. "Exponential smoothing: The state of the art--Part II," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 637-666.
    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. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Schuermann, Til & Smith, L. Vanessa, 2009. "Forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 642-675, October.
    2. Eklund, Jana & Kapetanios, George & Price, Simon, 2010. "Forecasting in the presence of recent structural change," Bank of England working papers 406, Bank of England.
    3. Agnieszka Markiewicz, 2010. "Monetary Policy, Model Uncertainty and Exchange Rate Volatility," CESifo Working Paper Series 2949, CESifo.
    4. Fu, Guomin & Zhu, Sijia, 2023. "Innovation, financial risk and natural resources for sustainable development: Fresh evidence from BRICS economies," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Mayr, Johannes, 2010. "Forecasting Macroeconomic Aggregates," Munich Dissertations in Economics 11140, University of Munich, Department of Economics.

    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. M. Hashem Pesaran & Andreas Pick, 2008. "Forecasting Random Walks Under Drift Instability," CESifo Working Paper Series 2293, CESifo.
    2. Davide De Gaetano, 2018. "Forecast Combinations in the Presence of Structural Breaks: Evidence from U.S. Equity Markets," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-19, March.
    3. Davide De Gaetano, 2016. "Forecast Combinations For Realized Volatility In Presence Of Structural Breaks," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0208, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    4. 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.
    5. Prasad S Bhattacharya & Dimitrios D Thomakos, 2011. "Improving forecasting performance by window and model averaging," CAMA Working Papers 2011-05, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    6. Rapach, David & Zhou, Guofu, 2013. "Forecasting Stock Returns," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 328-383, Elsevier.
    7. David Hendry & Michael P. Clements, 2010. "Forecasting from Mis-specified Models in the Presence of Unanticipated Location Shifts," Economics Series Working Papers 484, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. 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.
    9. Huang, Tao & Fildes, Robert & Soopramanien, Didier, 2019. "Forecasting retailer product sales in the presence of structural change," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 279(2), pages 459-470.
    10. Davide De Gaetano, 2017. "Forecasting With Garch Models Under Structural Breaks: An Approach Based On Combinations Across Estimation Windows," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0219, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    11. Xiaojie Xu, 2020. "Corn Cash Price Forecasting," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(4), pages 1297-1320, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Barbara Rossi, 2019. "Forecasting in the presence of instabilities: How do we know whether models predict well and how to improve them," Economics Working Papers 1711, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2021.
    14. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Pick, Andreas & Pranovich, Mikhail, 2013. "Optimal forecasts in the presence of structural breaks," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 177(2), pages 134-152.
    15. Lahiri, Kajal & Yang, Liu, 2013. "Forecasting Binary Outcomes," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1025-1106, Elsevier.
    16. Tae‐Hwy Lee & Shahnaz Parsaeian & Aman Ullah, 2022. "Forecasting Under Structural Breaks Using Improved Weighted Estimation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(6), pages 1485-1501, December.
    17. Mayr, Johannes, 2010. "Forecasting Macroeconomic Aggregates," Munich Dissertations in Economics 11140, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    18. Ke Yang & Langnan Chen & Fengping Tian, 2015. "Realized Volatility Forecast of Stock Index Under Structural Breaks," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(1), pages 57-82, January.
    19. Tae‐Hwy Lee & Shahnaz Parsaeian & Aman Ullah, 2022. "Optimal forecast under structural breaks," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 965-987, August.
    20. Chauvet, Marcelle & Potter, Simon, 2013. "Forecasting Output," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 141-194, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Forecast combinations; averaging over estimation windows; exponentially down-weighting observations; structural breaks.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cam:camdae:0814. 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: Jake Dyer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/ .

    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.