Forecast revisions of Mexican inflation and GDP growth

We analyze the forecasts of inflation and GDP growth contained in the Banco de México’s Survey of Professional Forecasters for the period 1995–2009. The forecasts are for the current and the following year, and comprise an unbalanced three-dimensional panel with multiple individual forecasters, target years, and forecast horizons. The fixed-event nature of the forecasts enables us to examine their efficiency by looking at the revision process. The panel structure allows us to control for aggregate shocks and to construct a measure of the news that impacted expectations in the period under study. We find that respondents anchor to their initial forecasts, updating their revisions smoothly as they receive more information. In addition, they do not seem to use publicly-known information in an efficient manner. These inefficiencies suggest clear areas of opportunity for improving the accuracy of the forecasts, for instance by taking into account the positive autocorrelation found in forecast revisions.     

中国土地出让金与GDP关系研究

研究目的:揭示土地出让金与GDP之间的作用性质和作用程度。研究方法:Granger因果检验,广义脉冲响应和方差分解分析。研究结果:Granger检验结果显示土地出让金收入对GDP存在单向的显著可信的Granger因果关系,广义脉冲响应和方差分解结果显示,土地出让金对GDP的影响大于GDP对土地出让金的影响。研究结论:土地出让金对GDP有着显著的单向作用,GDP对土地出让金有较强的依赖性;而经济波动对土地出让金的影响不明显。     

A textual analysis of Bank of England growth forecasts

The Bank of England publishes a quarterly Inflation Report that provides numerical forecasts and a text discussion of its assessment of the UK economy. Previous research has evaluated the quantitative forecasts that are included in these reports, but we focus on the qualitative discussion of output growth, by using an in-sample textual analysis procedure to convert these qualitative assessments into a score for each report over the period 2005–2014. We also construct out-of-sample scores for reports before and after this period. We then compare the scores both to real-time output growth data and to the corresponding quantitative projections published by the bank. We find that overall developments in the UK economy were represented accurately in the text of the Inflation Report. Furthermore, efficiency regressions suggest that there is information in the text that could improve the Bank of England’s quantitative nowcasts and one-quarter-ahead forecasts.     

GDP forecasts: Informational asymmetry of the SPF and FOMC minutes

This paper emphasizes asymmetric information about the U.S. economy between the FOMC and SPF. Following Stekler and Symington (2016), it extends their text-based FOMC minutes index (FMI) of economic outlook to 1986-2016. Following Ericsson (2016), it employs truncation adjustment indicators and reinterprets the FMI calibrations as the policy-makers forecasts of the GDP growth, which carry information about the staff Greenbook forecasts prepared prior to the bi-quarterly FOMC meetings. Tests confirm unbiasedness and rationality of these forecasts. The encompassing tests indicate that both the FMI and SPF forecasts contain unique information beyond their alternative’s information set and can be weighted equally. The orthogonality tests suggest that the SPF efficiently use all their information set but could gain if the FOMC minutes were published without a lag, while the policy-makers rely mostly on their projections made earlier in the meetings, and could benefit from incorporating the already published SPF forecasts.     

河南省区域物流与GDP增长的协整与因果关系分析

对河南省1978～2006年区域物流与GDP增长进行了协整分析与因果关系检验。研究结论表明,河南省区域物流与GDP之间存在着长期的稳定关系,GDP的变化是引起区域物流变化的原因,且GDP对区域物流的长期正向拉动更为显著。     

Measuring and testing Granger causality over the spectrum: An application to European production expectation surveys

Decomposing Granger causality over the spectrum allows us to disentangle potentially different Granger causality relationships over different frequencies. This may yield new and complementary insights compared to traditional versions of Granger causality. In this paper, we compare two existing approaches in the frequency domain, proposed originally by Pierce [Pierce, D. A. (1979). R-squared measures for time series. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74, 901–910] and Geweke [Geweke, J. (1982). Measurement of linear dependence and feedback between multiple time series. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 77, 304–324], and introduce a new testing procedure for the Pierce spectral Granger causality measure. To provide insights into the relative performance of this test, we study its power properties by means of Monte Carlo simulations. In addition, we apply the methodology in the context of the predictive value of the European production expectation surveys. This predictive content is found to vary widely with the frequency considered, illustrating the usefulness of not restricting oneself to a single overall test statistic.     

Forecasting GDP growth with NIPA aggregates: In search of core GDP

In addition to GDP, which is measured using expenditure data, the U.S. national income and product accounts (NIPAs) provide a variety of measures of economic activity, including gross domestic income and other aggregates that exclude one or more of the components that make up GDP. Similarly to the way in which economists have attempted to use core inflation—which excludes volatile energy and food prices—to predict headline inflation, the omission of GDP components may be useful in extracting a signal as to where GDP is going. We investigate the extent to which these NIPA aggregates constitute “core GDP.” In an out-of-sample forecasting exercise using a novel real-time dataset of NIPA aggregates, we find that consumption growth and the growth of GDP excluding inventories and trade have historically outperformed a canonical univariate benchmark for forecasting GDP growth, suggesting that these are promising measures of core GDP growth.     

四川省城市化与经济增长关系的实证分析

文章在回顾城市化与经济增长关系的基础上,对四川省1978—2007年城市化与经济增长的时间数列进行了格兰杰因果关系验证等实证计量研究。结果显示,改革开放以来,四川省经济增长对城市化的作用相对较强,但是,城市化的发展对经济增长的促进作用不是明显。有必要加快四川省城市化发展水平,在分析四川省城市化发展出现的问题的基础上,提出加快四川省城市化的对策和办法。     

湖北物流业与经济发展的实证研究

分析湖北发展物流业对经济增长的前项效应、后向效应和旁侧效应,阐明发展物流业可以促进湖北产业结构的优化。提高湖北综合经济实力。并运用协整理论、Granger因果检验定量分析了湖北物流业与经济发展之间的关系,结论是湖北物流业与经济发展具有长期稳定的协整关系．湖北物流业是经济发展的原因。     

中美社会物流成本与GDP定量关系研究

文中选取了2000～2012年的中美两国的社会物流成本和 GDP 等相关数据,用灰色关联分析（Grey Relational Analysis,GRA）的系统理论方法分析出社会物流成本、运输成本、保管成本和行政管理成本与GDP的内在关系。用这个定量关系代替以往的物流成本与GDP比值的对比标准,分析比较得出随着GDP动态发展的过程,社会物流成本中的某些要素出现的变化。进而提出降低我国物流成本的相关对策。研究表明：降低社会物流成本,优化物流成本结构,是我国现阶段甚至是较长一段时期内物流业发展振兴的关键所在。     

新能源对广西经济社会环境的影响分析

能源作为人类生存、发展的重要条件,在各国各地区经济发展中扮演着不可替代的作用。当前广西正处于工业化、城镇化发展阶段,能源短缺、环境污染等问题日益严重,应当把发展新能源产业作为解决能源问题的突破口和新方向。新能源产业的发展,势必对满足广西经济发展需求、促进城乡和谐发展、缓解生态环境压力产生重大而深远的影响。     

An unobserved component model for multi-rate forecasting of telephone call demand: the design of a forecasting support system

An Unobserved Components (UC) Model based on an enhanced version of the Dynamic Harmonic Regression model, including new multi-rate and modulated cycle procedures, is used to develop a customised package for forecasting and signal extraction applied to hourly telephone call numbers made to Barclaycard plc. service centres, with a forecasting horizon of up to several weeks in advance. The paper outlines both the methodological and algorithmic aspects of the modelling, forecasting and signal extraction procedures, including the design and implementation of forecasting support software with a specially designed Graphical User Interface within the ^® computing environment. The forecasting performance is evaluated comprehensively in comparison with the well-known seasonal ARIMA approach.     

Forecasting UK GDP growth and inflation under structural change. A comparison of models with time-varying parameters

Evidence from a large and growing body of empirical literature strongly suggests that there have been changes in the inflation and output dynamics in the United Kingdom. The majority of these papers base their results on a class of econometric models that allows for time-variation in the coefficients and volatilities of shocks. While these models have been used extensively for studying evolving dynamics and for structural analysis, there has been little evidence that they are useful for forecasting UK output growth and inflation. This paper attempts to fill this gap by comparing the performances of a wide range of time-varying parameter models in forecasting output growth and inflation. We find that allowing for time-varying parameters can lead to large and statistically significant gains in forecast accuracy.     

Predicting the geo-temporal variations of crime and disorder

Traditional police boundaries—precincts, patrol districts, etc.—often fail to reflect the true distribution of criminal activity and thus do little to assist in the optimal allocation of police resources. This paper introduces methods for crime incident forecasting by focusing upon geographical areas of concern that transcend traditional policing boundaries. The computerised procedure utilises a geographical crime incidence-scanning algorithm to identify clusters with relatively high levels of crime (hot spots). These clusters provide sufficient data for training artificial neural networks (ANNs) capable of modelling trends within them. The approach to ANN specification and estimation is enhanced by application of a novel and noteworthy approach, the Gamma test (GT).