Quantile forecasts are central to risk management decisions because of the widespread use of Value-at-Risk. A quantile forecast is the product of two factors : the model used to forecast volatility, and the method of computing quantiles from the volatility forecasts. In this paper we calculate...

The recent literature suggests that first announcements of real output growth in the US have predictive power for the future course of the economy. We show that this need not point to a behavioural relationship, whereby agents respond to the announcement, but may instead simply be a by-product...

We show how to improve the accuracy of real-time forecasts from models that include au-toregressive terms by estimating the models on ‘lightly-revised’data instead of using data from the latest-available vintage. Forecast accuracy is improved by reorganizing the data vintages employed in the...

Although many macroeconomic series such as US real output growth are sampled quarterly, many potentially useful predictors are observed at a higher frequency. We look at whether a recently developed mixed data-frequency sampling (MIDAS) approach can improve forecasts of output growth and...

Periodic models for seasonal data allow the parameters of the model to vary across the different seasons. This paper uses the components of UK consumption to see whether the periodic autoregressive (PAR) model yields more accurate forecasts than non-periodic models, such as the airline model of...

A comparison of the point forecasts and the central tendencies of probability distributions of inflation and output growth of the SPF indicates that the point forecasts are sometimes optimistic relative to the probability distributions. We consider and evaluate a number of possible explanations...

The recent literature has suggested that macroeconomic forecasters may have asymmetric loss functions, and that there may be heterogeneity across forecasters in the degree to which they weigh under and over-predictions. Using an individual-level analysis that exploits the SPF respondents’...

We consider the possibility that respondents to the Survey of Professional Forecasters round their probability forecasts of the event that real output will decline in the future. We make various assumptions about how forecasters round their forecasts, including that individuals have constant...

We delineate conditions which favour multi-step, or dynamic estimation for multi-step forecasting. An analytical example shows how dynamic estimation (DE) may accomodateincorrectly-specified models as the forecast lead alters, improving forecast performance for some mis-specifications. However,...

We investigate two characteristics of survey forecasts that are shown to contribute to their superiority over purely model-based forecasts. These are that the consensus forecasts incorporate the effects of perceived changes in the long-run outlook, as well as embodying departures from the path...