IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/wpaper/amz2443.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Analyzing Macroeconomic Forecastability

Author

Listed:
  • Ray Fair

Abstract

This paper examines whether recessions and booms are forecastable under the assumption that equity prices, housing prices, import prices, exports, and random shocks are not. Each of the 214 eight-quarter periods within the overall 1954:1-2009:1 period is examined regarding predictions of output growth and inflation. The results for low output growth vary by recession - there is no common pattern. Of the eight recessions, three are forecast well. For four of the five that are not, the main reason for each is not knowing: 1) the random shocks, 2) import prices and equity prices, 3) exports, and 4) exports and equity prices. For the fifth - the last one - all five components are large contributors, including housing prices: a perfect storm.

Suggested Citation

  • Ray Fair, 2009. "Analyzing Macroeconomic Forecastability," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2443, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Oct 2009.
  • Handle: RePEc:ysm:wpaper:amz2443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.som.yale.edu/icfpub/publications/2443.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(1 (Spring), pages 215-283.
    2. Marcelle Chauvet & Simon Potter, 2005. "Forecasting recessions using the yield curve," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 77-103.
    3. Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Williams, John C., 2009. "Forecasting Recessions: The Puzzle of the Enduring Power of the Yield Curve," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 492-503.
    4. Ireland, Peter N., 2004. "A method for taking models to the data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1205-1226, March.
    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. Ray C. Fair, 2009. "Analyzing Macroeconomic Forecastability," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1706, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Aug 2010.
    2. 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.
    3. Laurini, Márcio P. & Caldeira, João F., 2016. "A macro-finance term structure model with multivariate stochastic volatility," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 68-90.
    4. Sun, Jiandong & Feng, Shuaizhang & Hu, Yingyao, 2021. "Misclassification errors in labor force statuses and the early identification of economic recessions," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Kajal Lahiri & Cheng Yang, 2023. "ROC and PRC Approaches to Evaluate Recession Forecasts," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 19(2), pages 119-148, September.
    6. Hasse, Jean-Baptiste & Lajaunie, Quentin, 2022. "Does the yield curve signal recessions? New evidence from an international panel data analysis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 9-22.
    7. Peláez, Rolando F., 2015. "Market-timing the business cycle," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 55-64.
    8. Liu, Weiling & Moench, Emanuel, 2016. "What predicts US recessions?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1138-1150.
    9. Davig, Troy & Hall, Aaron Smalter, 2019. "Recession forecasting using Bayesian classification," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 848-867.
    10. Huiwen Lai & Eric C. Y. Ng, 2020. "On business cycle forecasting," Frontiers of Business Research in China, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-26, December.
    11. Shuping Shi & Peter C. B. Phillips & Stan Hurn, 2018. "Change Detection and the Causal Impact of the Yield Curve," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(6), pages 966-987, November.
    12. Travis J. Berge, 2015. "Predicting Recessions with Leading Indicators: Model Averaging and Selection over the Business Cycle," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(6), pages 455-471, September.
    13. Dongfeng Chang & Ryan S. Mattson & Biyan Tang, 2019. "The Predictive Power of the User Cost Spread for Economic Recession in China and the US," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-12, June.
    14. Ralf Fendel & Nicola Mai & Oliver Mohr, 2021. "Recession probabilities for the Eurozone at the zero lower bound: Challenges to the term spread and rise of alternatives," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(6), pages 1000-1026, September.
    15. Zihao Wang & Kun Li & Steve Q. Xia & Hongfu Liu, 2021. "Economic Recession Prediction Using Deep Neural Network," Papers 2107.10980, arXiv.org.
    16. Aguiar-Conraria, Luís & Martins, Manuel M.F. & Soares, Maria Joana, 2012. "The yield curve and the macro-economy across time and frequencies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 1950-1970.
    17. Hwang, Youngjin, 2019. "Forecasting recessions with time-varying models," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    18. Herman O. Stekler & Tianyu Ye, 2017. "Evaluating a leading indicator: an application—the term spread," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 183-194, August.
    19. Pierdzioch Christian & Gupta Rangan, 2020. "Uncertainty and Forecasts of U.S. Recessions," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 24(4), pages 1-20, September.
    20. Rachidi Kotchoni & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2020. "GDP Forecast Accuracy During Recessions," Working Papers 20-06, Chair in macroeconomics and forecasting, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management.

    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:ysm:wpaper:amz2443. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/smyalus.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.