On forecasting interest rates: An efficient markets perspective

Efficient markets do not preclude economic agents from successfully forecasting movements in short-term interest rates. For brief forecast intervals, however, ex ante changes in long-term rates are sufficiently close to zero that economic agents are not likely to improve upon the no-change prediction of the martingale model. Economic agents, in effect, are not likely to succeed in forecasting short-term movements in long-term interest rates. This paper illustrates the closeness of the martingale approximation for two sets of Canadian interest rates data, emphasizing the importance of the forecast interval. The paper then examines three sets of recorded forecasts of Canadian interest rates and finds results consistent with the theoretical discussion.     

Local social knowledge management: Community actors, institutions and multilevel governance in regional foresight exercises

A key question for policymakers at the regional and local level is how to provide the right conditions for generating the growth of more knowledge-intensive forms of economic activity within the context of dynamic innovation systems or learning regions. Regional foresight exercises may provide a useful instrument in helping chart their economic strategies. Successful regions must be able to engage in regional foresight exercises that identify and cultivate their assets, undertake collaborative processes to plan and implement change, and encourage a regional mindset that fosters growth. Communities and regions, like companies, need to innovate and adapt to remain competitive. As a result, successful regions must be able to engage in regional foresight exercises that identify and cultivate their assets, undertake collaborative processes to plan and implement change, and encourage a regional mindset that fosters growth. This paper provides an overview of these issues by reviewing the most important ideas in the recent literature on innovation systems, technological dynamism and local economic development. We regard regional foresight processes to be, at their most fundamental level, socially organized learning processes involving learning by individuals, by firms, and by institutions. One of our central concerns is to show how the actions of individuals to shape collective local visioning exercises interact with larger institutional structures to produce local outcomes.     

Quantitative wave model of macro-finance

This paper presents macro-finance as ensemble of economic agents and suggests use risk ratings of economic agents as their coordinates on economic space. Financial variables of separate economic agents are defined as functions of time and coordinates on economic space. Aggregations of financial variables of separate economic agents with coordinates near point x on economic space define macro-financial variables as function of x. Hydrodynamic-like equations describe evolution and mutual dependence between macro-financial variables. As example, for simple model of mutual dependence between macro-financial Demand on Investment and Interest Rate we derive hydrodynamic-like equations in a closed form. Perturbations of macro financial variables can generate waves those propagate on economic space and we derive wave equations. Macro financial waves can propagate on economic space with exponential growth of amplitudes and cause time fluctuations of finance variables that may model financial and business cycles. Variety of macro financial waves on economic space gives new look on internal dynamics of macro finance and reveals hidden complexity of macro financial modeling and forecasting.     

Sufficient information in structural VARs

Necessary and sufficient conditions under which a VAR contains sufficient information to estimate the structural shocks are derived. On the basis of this theoretical result we propose two simple tests to detect informational deficiency and a procedure to amend a deficient VAR. A simulation based on a DSGE model with fiscal foresight suggests that our method correctly identifies and fixes the informational problem. In an empirical application, we show that a bivariate VAR including unemployment and labor productivity is informationally deficient. Once the relevant information is included into the model, technology shocks appear to be contractionary.     

Economic Literacy and Inflation Expectations: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

We present experimental evidence of a link between economic literacy and inflation forecast accuracy. The experiment investigates two channels through which economic literacy may enable better forecasts: (i) choice of information and (ii) use of information. More literate subjects choose more relevant information and use the given information more effectively. Starting from a 10th percentile score, the boost in literacy from taking an economics course predicts a 0.64 standard deviation decline in mean absolute forecasting error. Our findings suggest that a significant portion of demographic heterogeneity in inflation expectations—observed in survey data—may be driven by heterogeneity in economic literacy.     

The Effect of Uncertainty on Optimal Control Models in the Neighbourhood of a Steady State

For both discrete and continuous time this paper derives the Taylor approximation to the effect of uncertainty (in the simple sense of risk, not Knightian uncertainty) on expected utility and optimal behaviour in stochastic control models when the uncertainty is small enough that one can focus on only the first term that involves uncertainty. There is a close and illuminating relationship between the discrete-time and continuous-time results. The analysis makes it possible to spell out a tight connection between the behaviour of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model and the corresponding perfect foresight model. However, the quantitative analytics of the stochastic model local to a certainty model calls for a more thorough investigation of the nearby certainty model than is typically undertaken.     

Change and discontinuity: Forecasting for the 1980s

This outline of forecasting takes a very broad view—covering many of the diverse approaches now available—so that attention can be paid to the role of forecasting in discovering and analysing alternatives, as well as to its established role in prediction. The philosophy of forecasting and the differing methodological approaches are discussed, highlighting particularly the problem of continuity and discontinuity in change, and the concepts of the cultural barrier and the paradigm shift. The author, applying the idea of discontinuity in social change (the paradigm shift), examines some possibilities for the 1980s. He argues that in the field of social forecasting, which is now becoming an important element in all other types of forecasting, the forecaster's capability to foresee broad changes in values is crucial, since such changes will themselves lead to further developments throughout society. Forecasting is now reaching the stage where its methods and philosophy allow us to assess potential hazards, and to preset, rather than react, to them.     

Extending foresight: The case for and nature of Foresight 2.0

This a programmatic paper with all of the frustrations thereof [1]. We point beyond the well-tilled ground of foresight as commonly practiced (called Foresight 1.0) to an emerging understanding of the work and character of foresight (called Foresight 2.0). By definition, as of today, this new territory is not well mapped, much less carefully worked-over. The question that drives this commitment to Foresight 2.0 was the heart of the 2007 Strathclyde Organizational Foresight Conference—Learning the Future Faster: “Can foresight as commonly practiced enable us to learn the future fast enough to meet and deal with the unique strategic challenges of the 21st Century?” The view taken is that Foresight 1.0 cannot meet this challenge; that it leads to small victories and major disasters. An explanation is offered: Foresight 1.0 was developed, and is still largely practiced, with the eyes and mind of management, whereas sustained success in the unique conditions of the 21st Century requires Foresight 2.0—seeing, thinking and acting with the eyes and mind of Leadership. This distinction is explained. Evidence is offered that futures research and foresight are slowly moving towards this new practice. The hope is expressed that, if we grasp the need for it, the nature of it and have explicit mental maps of the journey to it, we who are professional foresight researchers and practitioners will move faster and more effectively to develop Foresight 2.0. Several steps towards this end are outlined.     

Forecasting oil price realized volatility using information channels from other asset classes

Motivated from Ross (1989) who maintains that asset volatilities are synonymous to the information flow, we claim that cross-market volatility transmission effects are synonymous to cross-market information flows or “information channels” from one market to another. Based on this assertion we assess whether cross-market volatility flows contain important information that can improve the accuracy of oil price realized volatility forecasting. We concentrate on realized volatilities derived from the intra-day prices of the Brent crude oil and four different asset classes (Stocks, Forex, Commodities and Macro), which represent the different “information channels” by which oil price volatility is impacted from. We employ a HAR framework and estimate forecasts for 1-day to 66-days ahead. Our findings provide strong evidence that the use of the different “information channels” enhances the predictive accuracy of oil price realized volatility at all forecasting horizons. Numerous forecasting evaluation tests and alternative model specifications confirm the robustness of our results.     

3D,SF and the future

This article assesses the use of ‘science fiction’ (SF) in visioning or prototyping the potential economic and social consequences of so-called 3D printing. What is becoming clear to many commentators as well as science fiction writers is how rapid prototyping, or 3D printing more generally, could permit many final objects to be made near to or even by consumers on just-in-time ‘printing’ machines. This revolution in making would have many implications for the economy-and-society in the future by seriously augmenting, or possibly replacing, current systems of manufactured production, long-distance transportation and consumption. These 3D technologies have featured in SF works, including Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Ian McDonald's Brasyl, Charles Stross's Rule 34 and Cory Doctorow's Makers. The article reports on current research seeking to understand the implications of what may be a major new sociotechnical system in the making. Some creative uses of SF are presented in a professional workshop setting. As well the article documents the use of SF as a methodological prototype in forecasting alternative scenarios of the future. SF prototyping could be a powerful tool in the social science repertoire when put into action in forecasting possible technology and business futures.     

Post-industrial Canada: An econometric modelling approach

This study brings together the predominantly qualitative approach of social forecasting—as manifested by Daniel Bell's concept of the post-industrial society—and the quantitative analysis of econometric forecasting. The econometric model used here is the candide model of the Canadian national economy. The author seeks to verify the compatibility of some hypotheses of the post-industrial concept by using candide to develop a post-industrial scenario; in doing so, he obtains quantitative estimates of many critical features of the concept within the framework of a structured and reasonably consistent model.     

Exchange rates,innovations and forecasting

In this paper an ex-post forecasting experiment is performed on the basis of a version of the ‘news’ model of exchange rate determination. For several exchange rates the ‘news’ formulation of monetary exchange rate models leads to relatively accurate ex-post exchange rate forecasts at a number of forecasting horizons. For a majority of the exchange rates studied, however, the results do not compare favorably with those obtained from the naive random walk forecasting rule. Thus, the findings in this article provide mixed evidence with regard to a suggestion in the literature that the finding by Meese and Rogoff that structural models do not even outperform the random walk in an ex-post forecasting experiment, may be due to the fact that these models were not properly tested in a ‘news’ framework.     

Macroeconomic attention,economic policy uncertainty,and stock volatility predictability

This study adopts the newly constructed macroeconomic attention indices (MAI) and category-specific economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indices to predict stock volatility. Principal component analysis (PCA), scaled PCA (sPCA), and partial least squares (PLS) are used to extract the principal components from indicators. The results show that the combination of MAI and EPU indices can obtain additional information for predicting stock market volatility. In addition, the comprehensive index containing all indicator information (F_t^All) has the strongest short-term forecasting ability, whereas the MAI show the most substantial forecasting ability in long-term forecasting.     

The effects of the near-zero interest rate policy in a regime-switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model

Standard Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models cannot explain the near-zero interest rate policy (near-ZIRP) by the Federal Reserve. I study two methods of modeling the near-ZIRP in DSGE models: the perfect foresight model and the Markov regime-switching model developed in this paper. The near-ZIRP has a significant expansionary effect, and the regime-switching model generates a more realistic predicted path of macro variables than the perfect foresight model. Furthermore, the government purchases multiplier in the near-ZIRP regime is smaller than what the literature finds at the zero lower bound (ZLB), and the contractionary effects of higher productivity found by the recent literature at the ZLB are not present in the regime-switching model.     

Prediction markets for foresight

To navigate turbulent business environments, organizations have to develop foresight capacities that enable them to anticipate probable futures, respond rapidly to emerging changes, and support future oriented action. However, there are remaining barriers that impede a wider implementation of foresight. In particular, the necessities to deal with the future, anticipate change, enhance participation and reduce costs and complexity call for new methods to improve current foresight activities. In this paper, we introduce prediction markets to the field of foresight. Prediction markets are a structured approach to collect and aggregate information from groups and have recently gained attention in forecasting. Prediction markets go beyond simple forecasting and can contribute to foresight by providing advantages in terms of continuous and real-time information aggregation, motivation of participation and information revelation as well as cost-efficiency and scalability. We suggest four promising fields of application for prediction markets to enhance foresight: (1) continuous forecasting and environmental scanning, (2) combining with deliberative approaches, (3) continuous idea generation and (4) expert identification. We conclude by considering prediction markets as a nascent and promising method for foresight and advocate for further research.     

Events and economic forecasting models

In the June 1972 issue of Futures, Olaf Helmer developed the idea of cross-impact analysis to include both events (singular occurrences) and trends (gradual developments).¹ The present article pursues further this idea, using an econometric forecasting model to represent the economic trends in an economy, and a sequential cross-impact method to analyse the events which could change its course. The application of this idea, also described in the article, suggests a procedure for improving the communication between model builders and final users.     

Operationalization of space/time perspectives of individuals—Theory and empirical results from Turkey

The overall aim of the research is to provide an evaluation of differences in time and space perspectives of individuals in Turkey in order to understand the different approaches, perspectives or priorities that they may bring to futures studies.An empirical study aimed to collect information about the varying differences in time and space perspectives among participant individuals (undergraduate and PhD students at Yeditepe University and managers at Siemens-Turkey) and any other possible factors affecting the participants’ choices. Two sets of statements are generated representing the time and space perspectives of participants using the modified constructs found in the literature such as “Time Strata”, “Space-Time Graph”, and “Different Time Frames and Activities”.Our sample population of 185 individuals indicated a time horizon of 4.8 years and space horizon of 530 km. Majority of the sample population is observed to be concerned with issues that affect only their close environment over a short time period of “next week”, along with their larger geographical area as the “city”. A few of the sample population indicated to have a global perspective on time and space that can further reach into the future.Literature suggesting different individuals having different perspectives on time and space, depending on culture, past experience and the nature of the problems are instrumentalized in our study by relating it to the foresight tools and methodologies. Such varying perspectives may explain individuals/managers’ time and space horizon in which they think and act/execute.Based on the analysis of space/time preference of participant individuals, policy makers will benefit from incorporating the diversity of time and space dimensions into their strategic thought and national policy roadmaps.This exploratory study is comprised of the assessment of differing definitions and approaches to the future via individuals’ space and time perspectives. It aims to contribute to foresight methodologies and approaches, as well as bringing a significant impact on the quality and success of the national foresight project results.     

Is the future a political economy? Functional analysis of three leading foresight and futures studies journals

This article tests whether the field of foresight and futures studies shows significant variable selection biases in the modelling of the future in general and the impact of function systems in particular. We performed a word frequency analysis to measure the relative importance of the political system, the economy, science, art, religion, law, sport, health, education, and the mass media to three pertinent journals in the field of futures studies and foresight. The results show that Futures, Long Range Planning, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change have different and changing preferences for the above function systems, an information which authors may find helpful in supporting decisions on where to submit. Our results also show that all journals feature a highly significant bias to the triple helix systems – the political system, the economy, and science. While the latter bias may be adequate to scientific journals, the dominant focus on the political system and the economy as well as the corresponding neglect of the other systems points at implicit presumptions about the importance of the individual systems that may not be in line with their importance to the larger society.