Direct extrapolation of survey results on purchase intentions may give a biased view on actual consumer behavior. This is because the purchase intentions of consumers may be affected by the survey itself. On the positive side, such effects can be incorporated in econometric models to get...

We propose a new and simple methodology to estimate the loss function associated with experts' forecasts. Under the assumption of conditional normality of the data and the forecast distribution, the asymmetry parameter of the lin-lin and linex loss function can easily be estimated using a linear...

Macroeconomic forecasts are frequently produced, published, discussed and used. The formal evaluation of such forecasts has a long research history. Recently, a new angle to the evaluation of forecasts has been addressed, and in this review we analyse some recent developments from that...

In this article we give an overview of the relation between planning of maintenance and production. On the one hand we consider production planning and scheduling models in which failures and maintenance aspects are taken into account. Next we discuss the planning of maintenance activities, for...

With the advent of one-to-one marketing media, e.g. targeted direct mail or internet marketing, the opportunities to develop targeted marketing campaigns are enhanced in such a way that it is now both organizationally and economically feasible to profitably support a substantially larger number...

Macro-economic forecasts typically involve both a model component, which is replicable, as well as intuition, which is non-replicable. Intuition is expert knowledge possessed by a forecaster. If forecast updates are progressive, forecast updates should become more accurate, on average, as the...

Forecasts of key macroeconomic variables may lead to policy changes of governments, central banks and other economic agents. Policy changes in turn lead to structural changes in macroeconomic time series models. To describe this phenomenon we introduce a logistic smooth transition autoregressive...

Experts may have domain-specific knowledge that is not included in a statistical model and that can improve forecasts. While one-step-ahead forecasts address the conditional mean of the variable, model-based forecasts for longer horizons have a tendency to convert to the unconditional mean of a...