Search results

Producing good forecast is a vital aspect of a business. The accuracy of these forecasts could have a critical impact on the organization. We introduce a new, practical, and meaningful forecast performance measure called percentage forecast error (PFE). The results of comparing and evaluating this new measure to traditional forecasting performance measures under several different simulation scenarios are presented in this chapter.

Forecasting processes in organizational settings largely rely on human judgment, which makes it important to examine ways to improve the accuracy of these judgmental forecasts. The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of providing relative performance feedback on judgmental forecasting accuracy.

This paper is based on a controlled laboratory experiment.

The authors show that feedback that ranks the forecasting performance of participants improves their accuracy compared with the forecasting accuracy of participants who do not get such feedback. The authors also find that the effectiveness of such relative performance feedback depends on the content of the feedback information as well as on whether accurate forecasting performance is linked to additional financial rewards. Relative performance feedback becomes more effective when subjects are told they rank behind other participants than when they are told they rank higher than other participants. This finding is consistent with loss aversion: low-ranked individuals view their performance as a loss and work harder to avoid it. By contrast, top performers tend to slack off. Finally, the authors find that the addition of monetary rewards for top performers reduces the effectiveness of relative performance feedback, particularly for individuals whose performance ranks near the bottom.

One way to improve forecasting accuracy when forecasts rely on human judgment is to design an effective incentive system. Despite the crucial role of judgmental forecasts in organizations, little attention has been devoted to this topic. The aim of this study is to add to the literature in this field.

This chapter investigates the impact of different state correlation assumptions for out-of-sample performance of unobserved components (UC) models with stochastic volatility. Using several measures of US inflation the author finds that allowing for correlation between inflation’s trend and cyclical (or gap) components is a useful feature to predict inflation in the short run. In contrast, orthogonality between such components improves the out-of-sample performance as the forecasting horizon widens. Accordingly, trend inflation from orthogonal trend-gap UC models closely tracks survey-based measures of long-run inflation expectations. Trend dynamics in the correlated-component case behave similarly to survey-based nowcasts. To carry out estimation, an efficient algorithm which builds upon properties of Toeplitz matrices and recent advances in precision-based samplers is provided.

I review the burgeoning literature on applications of Markov regime switching models in empirical finance. In particular, distinct attention is devoted to the ability of Markov Switching models to fit the data, filter unknown regimes and states on the basis of the data, to allow a powerful tool to test hypotheses formulated in light of financial theories, and to their forecasting performance with reference to both point and density predictions. The review covers papers concerning a multiplicity of sub-fields in financial economics, ranging from empirical analyses of stock returns, the term structure of default-free interest rates, the dynamics of exchange rates, as well as the joint process of stock and bond returns.

An accurate long-term multi-step forecast provides crucial basic information for planning and reinforcing managerial decision-support. However, nonstationarity and nonlinearity, normally consisted of several types of managerial data can seriously ruin the forecasting computation. This paper aims to propose an effective long-term multi-step forecasting conjunction model, namely, wavelet–nonlinear autoregressive neural network (WNAR) conjunction model. The WNAR combines discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and nonlinear autoregressive neural network (NAR) to cope with such nonstationarity and nonlinearity within the managerial data; as a consequence, provides insight information that enhances accuracy and reliability of long-term multi-step perspective, leading to effective management decision-making.

Based on WNAR conjunction model, wavelet decomposition is executed for efficiently extracting hidden significant, temporal features contained in each of six benchmark nonstationary data sets from different managerial domains. Then, each extracted feature set at a particular resolution level is fed into NAR for the further forecast. Finally, NAR forecasting results are reconstructed. Forecasting performance measures throughout 1 to 30-time lags rely on mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency index or the coefficient of efficiency (E_f) and Diebold–Mariano (DM) test. An effect of data characteristic in terms of autocorrelation on forecasting performances of each data set are observed.

Long-term multi-step forecasting results show the best accuracy and high-reliability performance of the proposed WNAR conjunction model over some other efficient forecasting models including a single NAR model. This is confirmed by DM test, especially for the short-forecasting horizon. In addition, rather steady, effective long-term multi-step forecasting performances are yielded with slight effect from time lag changes especially for the data sets having particular high autocorrelation, relative against 95 per cent degree of confidence normal distribution bounds.

The WNAR, which combines DWT with NAR can be accounted as a bridge for the gap between machine learning, engineering signal processing and management decision-support systems. Thus, WNAR is referred to as a forecasting tool that provides insight long-term information for managerial practices. However, in practice, suitable exogenous input forecast factors are required on the managerial domain-by-domain basis to correctly foresee and effectively prepare necessary reasonable management activities.

Few works have been implemented to handle the nonstationarity, consisted of nonlinear managerial data to attain high-accurate long-term multi-step forecast. Combining DWT and NAR capabilities would comprehensively and specifically deal with the nonstationarity and nonlinearity difficulties at once. In addition, it is found that the proposed WNAR yields rather steady, effective long-term multi-step forecasting performance throughout specific long time lags regarding the data, having certainly high autocorrelation levels across such long time lags.

Study conditions of empirical publications on time series modeling and forecasting of electricity prices vary widely, making it difficult to generalize results. The key purpose of the present study is to offer a comparison of different model types and modeling conditions regarding their forecasting performance.

The authors analyze the forecasting performance of AR (autoregressive), MA (moving average), ARMA (autoregressive moving average) and GARCH (generalized autoregressive moving average) models with and without the explanatory variables, that is, power consumption and power generation from wind and solar. Additionally, the authors vary the detailed model specifications (choice of lag-terms) and transformations (using differenced time series or log-prices) of data and, thereby, obtain individual results from various perspectives. All analyses are conducted on rolling calibrating and testing time horizons between 2010 and 2014 on the German/Austrian electricity spot market.

The main result is that the best forecasts are generated by ARMAX models after spike preprocessing and differencing the data.

The present study extends the existing literature on electricity price forecasting by conducting a comprehensive analysis of the forecasting performance of different time series models under varying market conditions. The results of this study, in general, support the decision-making of electricity spot price modelers or forecasting tools regarding the choice of data transformation, segmentation and the specific model selection.

The accuracy of forecasts has a critical impact on an organization. A new, practical, and meaningful forecast performance measure, percentage forecasting error (PFE), was introduced by the authors in an earlier publication. In this chapter, we examined the accuracy of the PFE under several different scenarios and found the results to indicate that PFE offers forecasters an accurate and practical alternative to assess forecast accuracy.

Forecasting is a vital part of the planning process of most private and public organizations. A number of extant measures: Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD), Mean Square Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), have been used to assist in judging the forecast accuracy, and concomitantly, the consequences of those forecasts. In this paper we introduce, evolve, and implement a practical and effective method for assessing the accuracy of forecasts, the Percent Forecast Error (PFE). We test and evaluate the PFE, and modified optimized PFE (MOPFE), against the MAD, MSE, and MAPE measures of forecast accuracy using three time series datasets.

In recent work, we have developed a theory of economic forecasting for empirical econometric models when there are structural breaks. This research shows that well-specified models may forecast poorly, whereas it is possible to design forecasting devices more immune to the effects of breaks. In this chapter, we summarise key aspects of that theory, describe the models and data, then provide an empirical illustration of some of these developments when the goal is to generate sequences of inflation forecasts over a long historical period, starting with the model of annual inflation in the UK over 1875–1991 in Hendry (2001a).

A simulation study of the importance of the choice of demand forecasting method in the aggregate capacity planning of the UK electricity supply industry is reported. Using a financial performance measure rather than the conventional measures of accuracy, some of the univariate or extrapolative forecasting methods employed were found to perform surprisingly well over a six year time horizon, suggesting that such methods may merit a greater role in aggregate capacity planning than they appear to be accorded in current practice.