IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/sfb649/sfb649dp2008-073.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Testing directional forecast value in the presence of serial correlation

Author

Listed:
  • Blaskowitz, Oliver J.
  • Herwartz, Helmut

Abstract

Common approaches to test for the economic value of directional forecasts are based on the classical Chi-square test for independence, Fisher’s exact test or the Pesaran and Timmerman (1992) test for market timing. These tests are asymptotically valid for serially independent observations. Yet, in the presence of serial correlation they are markedly oversized as confirmed in a simulation study. We summarize serial correlation robust test procedures and propose a bootstrap approach. By means of a Monte Carlo study we illustrate the relative merits of the latter. Two empirical applications demonstrate the relevance to account for serial correlation in economic time series when testing for the value of directional forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • Blaskowitz, Oliver J. & Herwartz, Helmut, 2008. "Testing directional forecast value in the presence of serial correlation," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2008-073, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:sfb649:sfb649dp2008-073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/25316/1/590227114.PDF
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Schneider & Martin Spitzer, 2004. "Forecasting Austrian GDP using the generalized dynamic factor model," Working Papers 89, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    2. Easaw, Joshy Z. & Garratt, Dean & Heravi, Saeed M., 2005. "Does consumer sentiment accurately forecast UK household consumption? Are there any comparisons to be made with the US?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 517-532, September.
    3. Masahiro Ashiya, 2003. "The directional accuracy of 15-months-ahead forecasts made by the IMF," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(6), pages 331-333.
    4. Henriksson, Roy D & Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. II. Statistical Procedures for Evaluating Forecasting Skills," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 513-533, October.
    5. repec:onb:oenbwp:y::i:89:b:1 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jing Yang & Nikola Gradojevic, 2006. "Non-linear, non-parametric, non-fundamental exchange rate forecasting," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 227-245.
    7. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1994. "Automatic Lag Selection in Covariance Matrix Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(4), pages 631-653.
    8. Greer, Mark, 2003. "Directional accuracy tests of long-term interest rate forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 291-298.
    9. Pesaran, M Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 1992. "A Simple Nonparametric Test of Predictive Performance," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(4), pages 561-565, October.
    10. Havenner, Arthur & Modjtahedi, Bagher, 1988. "Foreign exchange rates : A multiple currency and maturity analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 251-264, February.
    11. 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.
    12. Oller, Lars-Erik & Barot, Bharat, 2000. "The accuracy of European growth and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 293-315.
    13. Donald W. K. Andrews, 2002. "Higher-Order Improvements of a Computationally Attractive "k"-Step Bootstrap for Extremum Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 119-162, January.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:5:p:1177-89 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Lahiri, Soumendra Nath, 1991. "Second order optimality of stationary bootstrap," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 335-341, April.
    16. Lai, Kon S., 1990. "An evaluation of survey exchange rate forecasts," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 61-65, January.
    17. Gencay, Ramazan, 1998. "Optimization of technical trading strategies and the profitability in security markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 249-254, May.
    18. Norman R. Swanson & Halbert White, 1997. "A Model Selection Approach To Real-Time Macroeconomic Forecasting Using Linear Models And Artificial Neural Networks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 540-550, November.
    19. Mills, Terence C. & Pepper, Gordon T., 1999. "Assessing the forecasters: an analysis of the forecasting records of the Treasury, the London Business School and the National Institute," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 247-257, July.
    20. Radulovic, Dragan, 1996. "The bootstrap of the mean for strong mixing sequences under minimal conditions," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 65-72, June.
    21. Bénédicte Vidaillet & V. d'Estaintot & P. Abécassis, 2005. "Introduction," Post-Print hal-00287137, HAL.
    22. Frederick Joutz & H. O. Stekler, 1998. "Data revisions and forecasting," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(8), pages 1011-1016.
    23. Cumby, Robert E. & Modest, David M., 1987. "Testing for market timing ability : A framework for forecast evaluation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 169-189, September.
    24. Masahiro Ashiya, 2006. "Are 16-month-ahead forecasts useful? A directional analysis of Japanese GDP forecasts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 201-207.
    25. Ash, J. C. K. & Smyth, D. J. & Heravi, S. M., 1998. "Are OECD forecasts rational and useful?: a directional analysis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 381-391, September.
    26. Inoue, Atsushi & Shintani, Mototsugu, 2006. "Bootstrapping GMM estimators for time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 531-555, August.
    27. Schnader, M H & Stekler, H O, 1990. "Evaluating Predictions of Change," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 99-107, January.
    28. Hall, Peter & Horowitz, Joel L, 1996. "Bootstrap Critical Values for Tests Based on Generalized-Method-of-Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 891-916, July.
    29. Mark Greer, 2005. "Combination forecasting for directional accuracy: An application to survey interest rate forecasts," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(6), pages 607-615.
    30. Joutz, Fred & Stekler, H. O., 2000. "An evaluation of the predictions of the Federal Reserve," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 17-38.
    31. Kuan, Chung-Ming & Liu, Tung, 1995. "Forecasting Exchange Rates Using Feedforward and Recurrent Neural Networks," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 347-364, Oct.-Dec..
    32. Mr. Michael J. Artis, 1996. "How Accurate Are the Imf's Short-Term Forecasts? Another Examination of the World Economic Outlook," IMF Working Papers 1996/089, International Monetary Fund.
    33. Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. I. An Equilibrium Theory of Value for Market Forecasts," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(3), pages 363-406, July.
    34. Anatolyev, Stanislav & Gerko, Alexander, 2005. "A Trading Approach to Testing for Predictability," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 455-461, October.
    35. Jordi Pons, 2001. "The rationality of price forecasts: a directional analysis," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 287-290.
    36. Stekler, H. O. & Petrei, G., 2003. "Diagnostics for evaluating the value and rationality of economic forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 735-742.
    37. Swanson, Norman R & White, Halbert, 1995. "A Model-Selection Approach to Assessing the Information in the Term Structure Using Linear Models and Artificial Neural Networks," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(3), pages 265-275, July.
    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. Kajal Lahiri & Liu Yang, 2018. "Confidence Bands for ROC Curves With Serially Dependent Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 115-130, January.
    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. Bergmeir, Christoph & Costantini, Mauro & Benítez, José M., 2014. "On the usefulness of cross-validation for directional forecast evaluation," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 132-143.
    4. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2014. "Purchasing and supply managers provide early clues on the direction of the US economy: An application of a new market-timing test," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 599-618.

    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. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2008-073 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Blaskowitz, Oliver & Herwartz, Helmut, 2014. "Testing the value of directional forecasts in the presence of serial correlation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 30-42.
    3. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2013. "Do corporate executives have accurate predictions for the economy? A directional analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 167-174.
    4. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2016. "Do production managers predict turning points? A directional analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-8.
    5. Y. Tsuchiya, 2014. "A directional evaluation of corporate executives' exchange rate forecasts," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 95-101, January.
    6. Blaskowitz, Oliver J. & Herwartz, Helmut, 2009. "On economic evaluation of directional forecasts," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2009-052, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    7. Greer, Mark, 2003. "Directional accuracy tests of long-term interest rate forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 291-298.
    8. Masahiro Ashiya, 2006. "Are 16-month-ahead forecasts useful? A directional analysis of Japanese GDP forecasts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 201-207.
    9. Mihaela Simionescu, 2014. "Directional accuracy for inflation and unemployment rate predictions in Romania," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Kavala Campus, Greece, vol. 7(2), pages 129-138, September.
    10. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    11. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2014. "Purchasing and supply managers provide early clues on the direction of the US economy: An application of a new market-timing test," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 599-618.
    12. Masahiro Ashiya, 2003. "The directional accuracy of 15-months-ahead forecasts made by the IMF," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(6), pages 331-333.
    13. Yoichi Tsuchiya, 2012. "Is the Purchasing Managers' Index useful for assessing the economy's strength? A directional analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1302-1311.
    14. Jordi Pons, 2001. "The rationality of price forecasts: a directional analysis," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 287-290.
    15. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2013. "Are government and IMF forecasts useful? An application of a new market-timing test," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 118-120.
    16. Grant Allan, 2012. "Evaluating the usefulness of forecasts of relative growth," Working Papers 1214, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    17. 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.
    18. Blaskowitz, Oliver & Herwartz, Helmut, 2011. "On economic evaluation of directional forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1058-1065, October.
    19. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2016. "Directional analysis of fiscal sustainability: Revisiting Domar's debt sustainability condition," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 189-201.
    20. Hamid Baghestani, 2011. "A directional analysis of Federal Reserve predictions of growth in unit labor costs and productivity," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 303-311.
    21. LeBaron, Blake, 2003. "Non-Linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance,: Philip Hans Franses and Dick van Dijk, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, 296 pp., Paperback, ISBN 0-521-77965-0, $33, [UK pound]22.95, [," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 751-752.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Directional forecasts; directional accuracy; forecast evaluation; testing independence; contingency tables; bootstrap;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • F17 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Forecasting and Simulation
    • F37 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Finance Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • F47 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation

    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:zbw:sfb649:sfb649dp2008-073. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sohubde.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.