IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/msh/ebswps/2019-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hierarchical Forecasting

Author

Listed:
  • George Athanasopoulos
  • Puwasala Gamakumara
  • Anastasios Panagiotelis
  • Rob J Hyndman
  • Mohamed Affan

Abstract

Accurate forecasts of macroeconomic variables are crucial inputs into the decisions of economic agents and policy makers. Exploiting inherent aggregation structures of such variables, we apply forecast reconciliation methods to generate forecasts that are coherent with the aggregation constraints. We generate both point and probabilistic forecasts for the first time in the macroeconomic setting. Using Australian GDP we show that forecast reconciliation not only returns coherent forecasts but also improves the overall forecast accuracy in both point and probabilistic frameworks.

Suggested Citation

  • George Athanasopoulos & Puwasala Gamakumara & Anastasios Panagiotelis & Rob J Hyndman & Mohamed Affan, 2019. "Hierarchical Forecasting," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 2/19, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:msh:ebswps:2019-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.monash.edu/business/ebs/research/publications/ebs/wp02-2019.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Billio, Monica & Casarin, Roberto & Ravazzolo, Francesco & van Dijk, Herman K., 2013. "Time-varying combinations of predictive densities using nonlinear filtering," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 177(2), pages 213-232.
    2. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2015. "Realtime nowcasting with a Bayesian mixed frequency model with stochastic volatility," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(4), pages 837-862, October.
    3. Geweke, John & Amisano, Gianni, 2010. "Comparing and evaluating Bayesian predictive distributions of asset returns," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 216-230, April.
    4. Andrawis, Robert R. & Atiya, Amir F. & El-Shishiny, Hisham, 2011. "Combination of long term and short term forecasts, with application to tourism demand forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 870-886.
    5. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Trapero, Juan R., 2014. "Improving forecasting by estimating time series structural components across multiple frequencies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 291-302.
    6. Shang, Han Lin & Haberman, Steven, 2017. "Grouped multivariate and functional time series forecasting:An application to annuity pricing," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 166-179.
    7. Athanasopoulos, George & Ahmed, Roman A. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2009. "Hierarchical forecasts for Australian domestic tourism," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 146-166.
    8. Andrawis, Robert R. & Atiya, Amir F. & El-Shishiny, Hisham, 2011. "Combination of long term and short term forecasts, with application to tourism demand forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 870-886, July.
    9. Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Jiang, Bin & Vahid, Farshid, 2019. "Macroeconomic forecasting for Australia using a large number of predictors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 616-633.
    10. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2017. "Forecasting with temporal hierarchies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(1), pages 60-74.
    11. Schäfer Juliane & Strimmer Korbinian, 2005. "A Shrinkage Approach to Large-Scale Covariance Matrix Estimation and Implications for Functional Genomics," Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-32, November.
    12. Todd E. Clark & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2015. "Macroeconomic Forecasting Performance under Alternative Specifications of Time‐Varying Volatility," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 551-575, June.
    13. Hyndman, Rob J. & Lee, Alan J. & Wang, Earo, 2016. "Fast computation of reconciled forecasts for hierarchical and grouped time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 16-32.
    14. Puwasala Gamakumara & Anastasios Panagiotelis & George Athanasopoulos & Rob J Hyndman, 2018. "Probabilisitic forecasts in hierarchical time series," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 11/18, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    15. Manzan, Sebastiano & Zerom, Dawit, 2008. "A bootstrap-based non-parametric forecast density," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 535-550.
    16. Rossana, Robert J & Seater, John J, 1995. "Temporal Aggregation and Economic Time Series," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(4), pages 441-451, October.
    17. Andrea Silvestrini & Matteo Salto & Laurent Moulin & David Veredas, 2008. "Monitoring and forecasting annual public deficit every month: the case of France," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 493-524, June.
    18. Yuan Gao & Han Lin Shang, 2017. "Multivariate Functional Time Series Forecasting: Application to Age-Specific Mortality Rates," Risks, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-18, March.
    19. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    20. Zellner, Arnold & Montmarquette, Claude, 1971. "A Study of Some Aspects of Temporal Aggregation Problems in Econometric Analyses," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 53(4), pages 335-342, November.
    21. Hyndman, Rob J. & Ahmed, Roman A. & Athanasopoulos, George & Shang, Han Lin, 2011. "Optimal combination forecasts for hierarchical time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 2579-2589, September.
    22. Cogley, Timothy & Morozov, Sergei & Sargent, Thomas J., 2005. "Bayesian fan charts for U.K. inflation: Forecasting and sources of uncertainty in an evolving monetary system," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1893-1925, November.
    23. Michael S. Smith & Shaun P. Vahey, 2016. "Asymmetric Forecast Densities for U.S. Macroeconomic Variables from a Gaussian Copula Model of Cross-Sectional and Serial Dependence," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 416-434, July.
    24. Capistrán, Carlos & Constandse, Christian & Ramos-Francia, Manuel, 2010. "Multi-horizon inflation forecasts using disaggregated data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 666-677, May.
    25. L. K. Hotta & J. Cardosc Neto, 1993. "The Effect Of Aggregation On Prediction In Autoregressive Integrated Moving‐Average Models," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 261-269, May.
    26. Brewer, K. R. W., 1973. "Some consequences of temporal aggregation and systematic sampling for ARMA and ARMAX models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 133-154, June.
    27. Tilmann Gneiting & Larissa Stanberry & Eric Grimit & Leonhard Held & Nicholas Johnson, 2008. "Rejoinder on: Assessing probabilistic forecasts of multivariate quantities, with an application to ensemble predictions of surface winds," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 17(2), pages 256-264, August.
    28. Tilmann Gneiting & Larissa Stanberry & Eric Grimit & Leonhard Held & Nicholas Johnson, 2008. "Assessing probabilistic forecasts of multivariate quantities, with an application to ensemble predictions of surface winds," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 17(2), pages 211-235, August.
    29. Hotta, Luiz Koodi, 1993. "The effect of additive outliers on the estimates from aggregated and disaggregated ARIMA models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 85-93, April.
    30. Marcellino, Massimiliano, 1999. "Some Consequences of Temporal Aggregation in Empirical Analysis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 17(1), pages 129-136, January.
    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. Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Athanasopoulos, George & Gamakumara, Puwasala & Hyndman, Rob J., 2021. "Forecast reconciliation: A geometric view with new insights on bias correction," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 343-359.
    2. Yang, Dazhi & van der Meer, Dennis, 2021. "Post-processing in solar forecasting: Ten overarching thinking tools," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    3. Hollyman, Ross & Petropoulos, Fotios & Tipping, Michael E., 2021. "Understanding forecast reconciliation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 149-160.
    4. George Athanasopoulos & Nikolaos Kourentzes, 2020. "On the Evaluation of Hierarchical Forecasts," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 2/20, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    5. Di Fonzo, Tommaso & Girolimetto, Daniele, 2023. "Cross-temporal forecast reconciliation: Optimal combination method and heuristic alternatives," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 39-57.

    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. 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.
    2. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2017. "Forecasting with temporal hierarchies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(1), pages 60-74.
    3. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2024. "Forecast reconciliation: A review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 430-456.
    4. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Athanasopoulos, George, 2019. "Cross-temporal coherent forecasts for Australian tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 393-409.
    5. Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Gamakumara, Puwasala & Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J., 2023. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation: Properties, evaluation and score optimisation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 693-706.
    6. Nystrup, Peter & Lindström, Erik & Møller, Jan K. & Madsen, Henrik, 2021. "Dimensionality reduction in forecasting with temporal hierarchies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1127-1146.
    7. Jeon, Jooyoung & Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2019. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation with applications to wind power and electric load," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 279(2), pages 364-379.
    8. Shanika L. Wickramasuriya & George Athanasopoulos & Rob J. Hyndman, 2019. "Optimal Forecast Reconciliation for Hierarchical and Grouped Time Series Through Trace Minimization," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 114(526), pages 804-819, April.
    9. Jing Zeng, 2016. "Combining country-specific forecasts when forecasting Euro area macroeconomic aggregates," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 43(2), pages 415-444, May.
    10. Li, Han & Li, Hong & Lu, Yang & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2019. "A forecast reconciliation approach to cause-of-death mortality modeling," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 122-133.
    11. Puwasala Gamakumara & Anastasios Panagiotelis & George Athanasopoulos & Rob J Hyndman, 2018. "Probabilisitic forecasts in hierarchical time series," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 11/18, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    12. Hollyman, Ross & Petropoulos, Fotios & Tipping, Michael E., 2021. "Understanding forecast reconciliation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 149-160.
    13. Shanika L Wickramasuriya & George Athanasopoulos & Rob J Hyndman, 2015. "Forecasting hierarchical and grouped time series through trace minimization," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 15/15, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    14. Mamingi Nlandu, 2017. "Beauty and Ugliness of Aggregation over Time: A Survey," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 68(3), pages 205-227, December.
    15. Li, Han & Hyndman, Rob J., 2021. "Assessing mortality inequality in the U.S.: What can be said about the future?," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 152-162.
    16. Li, Han & Chen, Hua, 2024. "Hierarchical mortality forecasting with EVT tails: An application to solvency capital requirement," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 549-563.
    17. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Saayman, Andrea & Jean-Pierre, Philippe & Provenzano, Davide & Sahli, Mondher & Seetaram, Neelu & Volo, Serena, 2021. "Visitor arrivals forecasts amid COVID-19: A perspective from the Africa team," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    18. Makridakis, Spyros & Hyndman, Rob J. & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2020. "Forecasting in social settings: The state of the art," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 15-28.
    19. Eckert, Florian & Hyndman, Rob J. & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2021. "Forecasting Swiss exports using Bayesian forecast reconciliation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(2), pages 693-710.
    20. Bergsteinsson, Hjörleifur G. & Møller, Jan Kloppenborg & Nystrup, Peter & Pálsson, Ólafur Pétur & Guericke, Daniela & Madsen, Henrik, 2021. "Heat load forecasting using adaptive temporal hierarchies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).

    More about this item

    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:msh:ebswps:2019-2. 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: Professor Xibin Zhang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dxmonau.html .

    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.