Given the existence of non-normality and nonlinearity in the data generating process of real house price returns over the period of 1831-2013, this paper compares the ability of various univariate copula models, relative to standard benchmarks (naive and autoregressive models) in forecasting...

Using forecasts of the inflation rate in South Africa, we study the rationality of forecasts and the shape of forecasters’ loss function. When we study micro-level data of individual forecasts, we find mixed evidence of an asymmetric loss function, suggesting that inflation forecasters are...

The objective of this paper is to predict, both in-sample and out-of-sample, the consumer price index (CPI) of the United States (US) economy based on monthly data covering the period of 1980:1-2013:12, using a variety of linear (random walk (RW), autoregressive (AR) and seasonally-adjusted...

This paper uses small set of variables-- real GDP, the inflation rate, and the short-term interest rate -- and a rich set of models -- athoeretical and theoretical, linear and nonlinear, as well as classical and Bayesian models -- to consider whether we could have predicted the recent downturn...

We compare the forecasting performances of the classical and the Minnesota-type Bayesian vector autoregressive (VAR) models with those of linear (fixed-parameter) and nonlinear (time-varying parameter) VARs involving a stochastic search algorithm for variable selection, estimated using Markov...

This paper evaluates the performance of 11 vector autoregressive models in forecasting 15 macroeconomic variables for the Indian economy over the 2007:01 to 2011:10 out-of-sample period. We consider 3 classical VARs, 4 Bayesian VARs and 4 Bayesian Factor Augmented VARs. Comparing the performance...

This paper provides out-of-sample forecasts of linear and non-linear models of US and Census regions housing prices. The forecasts include the traditional point forecasts, but also include interval and density forecasts of the housing price distributions. The non-linear smooth-transition...

We use South African survey data to study whether short-term inflation forecasts are unbiased. Depending on how we model a forecaster’s information set, we find that forecasts are biased due to forecaster herding. Evidence of forecaster herding is strong when we assume that the information set...

We study the directional accuracy of South African survey data of short-term and longer-term inflation forecasts. Upon applying techniques developed for the study of relative operating characteristic (ROC) curves, we find evidence that forecasts contain information with respect to the subsequent...

Accurate forecasts of home sales can provide valuable information for not only, policy makers, but also financial institutions and real estate professionals. Given this, our analysis compares the ability of two different versions of Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) methods, namely Recurrent SSA...