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How Costly is it to Ignore Breaks when Forecasting the Direction of a Time Series?

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Author Info
Allan Timmermann
M. Hashem Pesaran ()

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Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that many macroeconomic and financial time series are subject to occasional structural breaks. In this paper we present analytical results quantifying the effects of such breaks on the correlation between the forecast and the realization and on the ability to forecast the sign or direction of a time-series that is subject to breaks. Our results suggest that it can be very costly to ignore breaks. Forecasting approaches that condition on the most recent break are likely to perform better over unconditional approaches that use expanding or rolling estimation windows provided that the break is reasonably large.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number CESifo Working Paper No. 875.

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Date of creation: 2003
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Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_875

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Related research
Keywords: sign prediction; estimation window; structural breaks;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions
G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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    Other versions:
  2. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert, 2002. "Regime Switches in Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 163-82, April.
    Other versions:
  3. Gabriel Perez-Quiros & Allan Timmermann, 2000. "Firm Size and Cyclical Variations in Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1229-1262, 06. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 2002. "Market timing and return prediction under model instability," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(5), pages 495-510, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Sola, M. & Driffill, J., 1992. "Testing the Term Structure of Interest Rates from a Stationary Switching Regime VAR (forthcoming Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 1994)," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 9202, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
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  8. Leitch, Gordon & Tanner, J Ernest, 1991. "Economic Forecast Evaluation: Profits versus the Conventional Error Measures," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 580-90, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Gray, Stephen F., 1996. "Modeling the conditional distribution of interest rates as a regime-switching process," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 27-62, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Chu, Chia-Shang James & Stinchcombe, Maxwell & White, Halbert, 1996. "Monitoring Structural Change," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1045-65, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Henriksson, Roy D & Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. II. Statistical Procedures for Evaluating Forecasting Skills," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 513-33, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Timmermann, Allan, 2001. "Structural Breaks, Incomplete Information, and Stock Prices," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(3), pages 299-314, July.
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  18. Graham Elliott & Ulrich Mueller, 2004. "Optimally Testing General Breaking Processes in Linear Time Series Models," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series 2003-07, Department of Economics, UC San Diego. [Downloadable!]
  19. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22. [Downloadable!]
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  20. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Evidence on Structural Instability in Macroeconomic Time Series Relations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(1), pages 11-30, January.
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  21. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    Other versions:
  22. Garcia, Rene & Perron, Pierre, 1996. "An Analysis of the Real Interest Rate under Regime Shifts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 111-25, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  23. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change with Unknown Change Point," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 821-56, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  24. Ploberger, Werner & Kramer, Walter & Kontrus, Karl, 1989. "A new test for structural stability in the linear regression model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 307-318, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Pavel Cizek & Wolfgang Härdle & Vladimir Spokoiny, 2008. "Adaptive pointwise estimation in time-inhomogeneous time-series models," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2008-002, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Junsoo Lee & John A. List & Mark Strazicich, 2005. "Nonrenewable Resource Prices: Deterministic or Stochastic Trends?," NBER Working Papers 11487, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Stanislav Anatolyev, 2006. "Nonparametric retrospection and monitoring of predictability of financial returns," Working Papers w0071, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR). [Downloadable!]
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  4. Colino, Evelyn V. & Irwin, Scott H. & Garcia, Philip, 2008. "How Much Can Outlook Forecasts be Improved? An Application to the U.S. Hog Market," 2008 Conference, April 21-22, 2008, St. Louis, Missouri 37620, NCCC-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management. [Downloadable!]
  5. Gutierrez, Luciano & Erickson, Kenneth & Westerlund, Joakim, 2005. "The Present Value Model, Farmland Prices and Structural Breaks," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24702, European Association of Agricultural Economists. [Downloadable!]
  6. Galvão, Ana Beatriz C., 2003. "Structural Break Threshold VARs for Predicting US Recessions using the Spread," Ibmec Working Papers wpe_37, Ibmec Working Paper, Ibmec São Paulo. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Valentina Corradi & Norman Swanson, 2004. "Predective Density and Conditional Confidence Interval Accuracy Tests," Departmental Working Papers 200423, Rutgers University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Yang Yang & Tae-Hwy Lee, 2004. "Bagging Binary Predictors for Time Series," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 512, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
  9. Joseph P. Byrne & Roger Perman, 2006. "Unit Roots and Structural Breaks: A Survey of the Literature," Working Papers 2006_10, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow. [Downloadable!]
  10. Peter F. Christoffersen & Francis X. Diebold, 2003. "Financial Asset Returns, Direction-of-Change Forecasting, and Volatility Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 10009, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Kajal Lahiri & Wenxiong Yao & Peg Young, 2003. "Cycles in the Transportation Sector and the Aggregate Economy," Discussion Papers 03-14, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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