In this article, we propose a predictive mean squared error criterion for selecting diffusion index models, which are useful in forecasting when many predictors are available. A special feature of the proposed criterion is that it takes into account the uncertainty in estimated common factors....

<b> </b> For situations with a large number of series, N, each with T observations and each containing a certain amount of information for prediction of the variable of interest, we propose a new statistical modelling methodology that first estimates the common factors from a panel of data using...