IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jforec/v41y2022i6p1049-1064.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Uncertainty and forecastability of regional output growth in the UK: Evidence from machine learning

Author

Listed:
  • Mehmet Balcilar
  • David Gabauer
  • Rangan Gupta
  • Christian Pierdzioch

Abstract

Utilizing a machine learning technique known as random forests, we study whether regional output growth uncertainty helps to improve the accuracy of forecasts of regional output growth for 12 regions of the UK using monthly data for the period from 1970 to 2020. We use a stochastic volatility model to measure regional output growth uncertainty. We document the importance of interregional stochastic volatility spillovers and the direction of the transmission mechanism. Given this, our empirical results shed light on the contribution to forecast performance of own uncertainty associated with a particular region, output growth uncertainty of other regions, and output growth uncertainty as measured for London as well. We find that output growth uncertainty significantly improves forecast performance in several cases, where we also document cross‐regional heterogeneity in this regard.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehmet Balcilar & David Gabauer & Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch, 2022. "Uncertainty and forecastability of regional output growth in the UK: Evidence from machine learning," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 1049-1064, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jforec:v:41:y:2022:i:6:p:1049-1064
    DOI: 10.1002/for.2851
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/for.2851
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/for.2851?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kastner, Gregor & Frühwirth-Schnatter, Sylvia, 2014. "Ancillarity-sufficiency interweaving strategy (ASIS) for boosting MCMC estimation of stochastic volatility models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 408-423.
    2. Duprey, Thibaut & Klaus, Benjamin & Peltonen, Tuomas, 2017. "Dating systemic financial stress episodes in the EU countries," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 30-56.
    3. Segal, Gill & Shaliastovich, Ivan & Yaron, Amir, 2015. "Good and bad uncertainty: Macroeconomic and financial market implications," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 369-397.
    4. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Pellegrino, Giovanni, 2021. "Uncertainty shocks and the great recession: Nonlinearities matter," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    5. Francis X. Diebold & Kamil Yilmaz, 2009. "Measuring Financial Asset Return and Volatility Spillovers, with Application to Global Equity Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 158-171, January.
    6. Rangan Gupta & Chi Keung Marco Lau & Mark E. Wohar, 2019. "The impact of US uncertainty on the Euro area in good and bad times: evidence from a quantile structural vector autoregressive model," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 353-368, May.
    7. Diebold, Francis X. & Yılmaz, Kamil, 2014. "On the network topology of variance decompositions: Measuring the connectedness of financial firms," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 182(1), pages 119-134.
    8. Matteo Barigozzi & Marc Hallin, 2016. "Generalized dynamic factor models and volatilities: recovering the market volatility shocks," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 19(1), pages 33-60, February.
    9. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan & Plakandaras, Vasilios, 2018. "Dynamic connectedness of uncertainty across developed economies: A time-varying approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 63-75.
    10. Elie Bouri & Konstantinos Gkillas & Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch, 2021. "Forecasting Realized Volatility of Bitcoin: The Role of the Trade War," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 57(1), pages 29-53, January.
    11. Jing Cynthia Wu & Fan Dora Xia, 2016. "Measuring the Macroeconomic Impact of Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 253-291, March.
    12. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    13. Junttila, Juha & Vataja, Juuso, 2018. "Economic policy uncertainty effects for forecasting future real economic activity," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 569-583.
    14. Al-Thaqeb, Saud Asaad & Algharabali, Barrak Ghanim, 2019. "Economic policy uncertainty: A literature review," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    15. Mawuli Segnon & Rangan Gupta & Stelios Bekiros & Mark E. Wohar, 2018. "Forecasting US GNP growth: The role of uncertainty," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 541-559, August.
    16. Efrem Castelnuovo & Guay Lim & Giovanni Pellegrino, 2017. "A Short Review of the Recent Literature on Uncertainty," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 50(1), pages 68-78, March.
    17. John Y. Campbell, 2008. "Viewpoint: Estimating the equity premium," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(1), pages 1-21, February.
    18. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell, 2020. "UK regional nowcasting using a mixed frequency vector auto‐regressive model with entropic tilting," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(1), pages 91-119, January.
    19. Gupta, Rangan & Ma, Jun & Risse, Marian & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "Common business cycles and volatilities in US states and MSAs: The role of economic uncertainty," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 317-337.
    20. Pindyck, Robert S, 1991. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1110-1148, September.
    21. John Y. Campbell, 2007. "Estimating the Equity Premium," NBER Working Papers 13423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    23. Balcilar, Mehmet & Gupta, Rangan & Segnon, Mawuli, 2016. "The role of economic policy uncertainty in predicting U.S. recessions: A mixed-frequency Markov-switching vector autoregressive approach," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 10, pages 1-20.
    24. Ben S. Bernanke, 1983. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Cyclical Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(1), pages 85-106.
    25. Lastrapes, William D. & Wiesen, Thomas F.P., 2021. "The joint spillover index," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 681-691.
    26. Michael Beenstock & Daniel Felsenstein, 2008. "Regional Heterogeneity, Conditional Convergence and Regional Inequality," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 475-488.
    27. Konstantinos Gkillas & Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch, 2021. "Forecasting realized volatility of bitcoin returns: tail events and asymmetric loss," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(16), pages 1626-1644, November.
    28. Salisu, Afees A. & Gupta, Rangan & Karmakar, Sayar & Das, Sonali, 2022. "Forecasting output growth of advanced economies over eight centuries: The role of gold market volatility as a proxy of global uncertainty," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    29. Diebold, Francis X. & Yilmaz, Kamil, 2012. "Better to give than to receive: Predictive directional measurement of volatility spillovers," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 57-66.
    30. Don Bredin & Stilianos Fountas & Christos Savva, 2021. "Is British output growth related to its uncertainty? Evidence using eight centuries of data," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 68(3), pages 345-364, July.
    31. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    32. Nikolaos Antonakakis & Ioannis Chatziantoniou & David Gabauer, 2020. "Refined Measures of Dynamic Connectedness based on Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressions," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-23, April.
    33. Karnizova, Lilia & Li, Jiaxiong (Chris), 2014. "Economic policy uncertainty, financial markets and probability of US recessions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 261-265.
    34. Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan, 2018. "On the transmission mechanism of country-specific and international economic uncertainty spillovers: Evidence from a TVP-VAR connectedness decomposition approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 63-71.
    35. Christina Christou & Giray Gozgor & Rangan Gupta & Chi keung Marco Lau, 2020. "Are Uncertainties across the World Convergent?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(1), pages 855-862.
    36. Christou, Christina & Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan, 2020. "Time-Varying impact of uncertainty shocks on macroeconomic variables of the united kingdom: Evidence from over 150 years of monthly data," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    37. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell & Aubrey Poon, 2020. "Regional output growth in the United Kingdom: More timely and higher frequency estimates from 1970," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 176-197, March.
    38. Mehmet Balcilar & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir, 2020. "A re-examination of growth and growth uncertainty relationship in a stochastic volatility in the mean model with time-varying parameters," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 611-641, August.
    39. Mumtaz, Haroon, 2018. "Does uncertainty affect real activity? Evidence from state-level data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 127-130.
    40. Koop, Gary & McIntyre, Stuart & Mitchell, James & Poon, Aubrey, 2020. "Reconciled Estimates And Nowcasts Of Regional Output In The Uk," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 253, pages 44-59, August.
    41. Hartman, Richard, 1972. "The effects of price and cost uncertainty on investment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 258-266, October.
    42. Goodness C. Aye & Christina Christou & Luis A. Gil‐Alana & Rangan Gupta, 2019. "Forecasting the Probability of Recessions in South Africa: the Role of Decomposed Term Spread and Economic Policy Uncertainty," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 101-116, January.
    43. Holger Kraft & Eduardo Schwartz & Farina Weiss, 2018. "Growth options and firm valuation," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 24(2), pages 209-238, March.
    44. Abel, Andrew B, 1983. "Optimal Investment under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 228-233, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eren Bas & Erol Eğrioğlu, 2023. "A new recurrent pi‐sigma artificial neural network inspired by exponential smoothing feedback mechanism," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 802-812, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mehmet Balcilar & David Gabauer & Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch, 2021. "Uncertainty and Forecastability of Regional Output Growth in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Machine Learning," Working Papers 202111, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    2. Salisu, Afees A. & Gupta, Rangan & Karmakar, Sayar & Das, Sonali, 2022. "Forecasting output growth of advanced economies over eight centuries: The role of gold market volatility as a proxy of global uncertainty," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Gupta, Rangan & Pierdzioch, Christian & Salisu, Afees A., 2022. "Oil-price uncertainty and the U.K. unemployment rate: A forecasting experiment with random forests using 150 years of data," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    4. Pierdzioch Christian & Gupta Rangan, 2020. "Uncertainty and Forecasts of U.S. Recessions," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 24(4), pages 1-20, September.
    5. Woraphon Yamaka & Rangan Gupta & Sukrit Thongkairat & Paravee Maneejuk, 2023. "Structural and predictive analyses with a mixed copula‐based vector autoregression model," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(2), pages 223-239, March.
    6. Aviral Kumar Tiwari & Micheal Kofi Boachie & Rangan Gupta, 2021. "Network Analysis of Economic and Financial Uncertainties in Advanced Economies: Evidence from Graph-Theory," Advances in Decision Sciences, Asia University, Taiwan, vol. 25(1), pages 188-215, March.
    7. Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan, 2020. "Spillovers across macroeconomic, financial and real estate uncertainties: A time-varying approach," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 167-173.
    8. Plakandaras, Vasilios & Gupta, Rangan & Balcilar, Mehmet & Ji, Qiang, 2022. "Evolving United States stock market volatility: The role of conventional and unconventional monetary policies," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    9. Mehmet Balcilar & David Gabauer & Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch, 2023. "Climate Risks and Forecasting Stock Market Returns in Advanced Economies over a Century," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-21, April.
    10. Cagli, Efe Caglar & Mandaci, Pinar Evrim, 2023. "Time and frequency connectedness of uncertainties in cryptocurrency, stock, currency, energy, and precious metals markets," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    11. Ghaemi Asl, Mahdi & Adekoya, Oluwasegun Babatunde & Rashidi, Muhammad Mahdi & Ghasemi Doudkanlou, Mohammad & Dolatabadi, Ali, 2022. "Forecast of Bayesian-based dynamic connectedness between oil market and Islamic stock indices of Islamic oil-exporting countries: Application of the cascade-forward backpropagation network," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    12. Gabauer, David & Chatziantoniou, Ioannis & Stenfors, Alexis, 2023. "Model-free connectedness measures," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    13. Guo, Junjie & Li, Youshu & Shao, Qinglong, 2022. "Cross-category spillover effects of economic policy uncertainty between China and the US: Time and frequency evidence," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    14. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Gabauer, David & Gupta, Rangan, 2019. "Greek economic policy uncertainty: Does it matter for Europe? Evidence from a dynamic connectedness decomposition approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 535(C).
    15. Nikolaos Antonakakis & David Gabauer & Rangan Gupta, 2018. "Greek Economic Policy Uncertainty: Does it Matter for the European Union?," Working Papers 201840, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    16. Christina Christou & Giray Gozgor & Rangan Gupta & Chi keung Marco Lau, 2020. "Are Uncertainties across the World Convergent?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(1), pages 855-862.
    17. Stenfors, Alexis & Chatziantoniou, Ioannis & Gabauer, David, 2022. "Independent policy, dependent outcomes: A game of cross-country dominoes across European yield curves," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    18. Christou, Christina & Gupta, Rangan, 2020. "Forecasting equity premium in a panel of OECD countries: The role of economic policy uncertainty," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 243-248.
    19. Rangan Gupta & Chi Keung Marco Lau & Mark E. Wohar, 2019. "The impact of US uncertainty on the Euro area in good and bad times: evidence from a quantile structural vector autoregressive model," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 353-368, May.
    20. Luo, Keyu & Guo, Qiang & Li, Xiafei, 2022. "Can the return connectedness indices from grey energy to natural gas help to forecast the natural gas returns?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jforec:v:41:y:2022:i:6:p:1049-1064. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/2966 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.