IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ilo/ilowps/994888903402676.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An accuracy assessment of the global employment trends' unemployment rate forecasts

Author

Listed:
  • Bourmpoula, Evangelia.
  • Wieser, Christina.

Abstract

This study provides a quantitative assessment of the bias, accuracy, and efficiency of the Global Employment Trends (GET) global and regional unemployment rate forecasts made in three recent annual GET reports. After conducting a series of statistical tests, the results suggest that, on average across all countries with data availability, the GET unemployment rate forecasts are slightly biased; we over-predict one and two years ahead and under-predict three and four years ahead. However, this bias is not significant for one to three years ahead. Moreover, our tests for accuracy show that the shorter the prediction period, the more accurate our forecasts indicated by smaller forecast errors for shorter prediction periods and larger forecast errors for longer periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Bourmpoula, Evangelia. & Wieser, Christina., 2014. "An accuracy assessment of the global employment trends' unemployment rate forecasts," ILO Working Papers 994888903402676, International Labour Organization.
    • Handle: RePEc:ilo:ilowps:994888903402676
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ilo.userservices.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/41ILO_INST/1252398960002676
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Teresa Leal & Javier J. Pérez & Mika Tujula & Jean-Pierre Vidal, 2008. "Fiscal Forecasting: Lessons from the Literature and Challenges," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 347-386, September.
    2. Michael Artis & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2001. "Fiscal forecasting: The track record of the IMF, OECD and EC," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 4(1), pages 20-36.
    3. Patton, Andrew J. & Timmermann, Allan, 2007. "Properties of optimal forecasts under asymmetric loss and nonlinearity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 884-918, October.
    4. Schanne, N. & Wapler, R. & Weyh, A., 2010. "Regional unemployment forecasts with spatial interdependencies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 908-926, October.
    5. Lukas Vogel, 2007. "How do the OECD Growth Projections for the G7 Economies Perform?: A Post-Mortem," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 573, OECD Publishing.
    6. Carlos Bowles & Roberta Friz & Veronique Genre & Geoff Kenny & Aidan Meyler & Tuomas Rautanen, 2010. "An Evaluation of the Growth and Unemployment Forecasts in the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2010(2), pages 1-28.
    7. Mr. Allan Timmermann, 2006. "An Evaluation of the World Economic Outlook Forecasts," IMF Working Papers 2006/059, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Allan Timmermann, 2007. "An Evaluation of the World Economic Outlook Forecasts," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 54(1), pages 1-33, May.
    9. Ash, J. C. K. & Smyth, D. J. & Heravi, S. M., 1998. "Are OECD forecasts rational and useful?: a directional analysis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 381-391, September.
    10. Vassiliki Koutsogeorgopoulou, 2000. "A Post-Mortem on Economic Outlook Projections," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 274, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bourmpoula, Evangelia. & Wieser, Christina., 2014. "An accuracy assessment of the global employment trends' unemployment rate forecasts," Global Employment Trends Reports 994888903402676, International Labour Office, Economic and Labour Market Analysis Department.
    2. repec:ilo:ilowps:488890 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Mihaela SIMIONESCU, 2015. "The Evaluation of Global Accuracy of Romanian Inflation Rate Predictions Using Mahalanobis Distance," Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy, College of Management, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, vol. 3(1), pages 133-149, March.
    4. Ildeberta Abreu, 2011. "International organisations’ vs. private analysts’ forecasts: an evaluation," Working Papers w201120, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    5. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2023. "Assessing the World Bank’s growth forecasts," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 64-84.
    6. Giovannelli, Alessandro & Pericoli, Filippo Maria, 2020. "Are GDP forecasts optimal? Evidence on European countries," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 963-973.
    7. Merola, Rossana & Pérez, Javier J., 2013. "Fiscal forecast errors: Governments versus independent agencies?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 285-299.
    8. Krkoska, Libor & Teksoz, Utku, 2009. "How reliable are forecasts of GDP growth and inflation for countries with limited coverage?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 376-388, December.
    9. Carlos Fonseca Marinheiro, 2010. "Fiscal sustainability and the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts: do supranational forecasts rather than government forecasts make a difference?," GEMF Working Papers 2010-07, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    10. Yoichi Tsuchiya, 2021. "Thirty‐year assessment of Asian Development Bank's forecasts," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 35(2), pages 18-40, November.
    11. Cepparulo, Alessandra & Gastaldi, Francesca & Giuriato, Luisa & Sacchi, Agnese, 2011. "Budgeting versus implementing fiscal policy:the Italian case," MPRA Paper 32474, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Rossana Merola & Javier J. Pérez, 2012. "Fiscal forecast errors: governments vs independent agencies?," Working Papers 1233, Banco de España.
    13. Krkoska, Libor & Teksoz, Utku, 2007. "Accuracy of GDP growth forecasts for transition countries: Ten years of forecasting assessed," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 29-45.
    14. Paulo Júlio & Pedro M. Esperança, 2012. "Evaluating the forecast quality of GDP components: An application to G7," GEE Papers 0047, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Apr 2012.
    15. Olafsdottir, Katrin & Sigurdsson, Kari, 2007. "Hversu vel tekst til með verðbólguspár greiningardeilda? [How accurate are the inflation forecasts published by the commercial banks?]," MPRA Paper 18288, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Anatolyev, Stanislav, 2009. "Dynamic modeling under linear-exponential loss," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 82-89, January.
    17. Carriero, Andrea & Mumtaz, Haroon & Theophilopoulou, Angeliki, 2015. "Macroeconomic information, structural change, and the prediction of fiscal aggregates," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 325-348.
    18. Demetrescu, Matei & Hacıoğlu Hoke, Sinem, 2019. "Predictive regressions under asymmetric loss: Factor augmentation and model selection," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 80-99.
    19. Rybacki, Jakub, 2019. "Fiscal Deficit Forecasts by International Institutions: Evidence for a Double Standard?," MPRA Paper 94031, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Pina, Álvaro M. & Venes, Nuno M., 2011. "The political economy of EDP fiscal forecasts: An empirical assessment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 534-546, September.

    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:ilo:ilowps:994888903402676. 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: Vesa Sivunen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilounch.html .

    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.