IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/knz/dpteco/1143.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Disagreement, Uncertainty and the True Predictive Density

Author

Listed:
  • Fabian Krüger

    (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany)

  • Ingmar Nolte

    (Warwick Business School, Financial Econometrics Research Centre (FERC), University of Warwick)

Abstract

This paper generalizes the discussion about disagreement versus uncertainty in macroeconomic survey data by emphasizing the importance of the (unknown) true predictive density. Using a forecast combination approach, we ask whether cross sections of survey point forecasts help to approximate the true predictive density. We find that although these cross-sections perform poorly individually, their inclusion into combined predictive densities can significantly improve upon densities relying solely on time series information.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabian Krüger & Ingmar Nolte, 2011. "Disagreement, Uncertainty and the True Predictive Density," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2011-43, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    • Handle: RePEc:knz:dpteco:1143
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/wiwi/workingpaperseries/WP_43-Krueger-Nolte-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giordani, Paolo & Soderlind, Paul, 2003. "Inflation forecast uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1037-1059, December.
    2. Komunjer, Ivana, 2005. "Quasi-maximum likelihood estimation for conditional quantiles," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 137-164, September.
    3. Asger Lunde & Peter R. Hansen, 2005. "A forecast comparison of volatility models: does anything beat a GARCH(1,1)?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(7), pages 873-889.
    4. Engelberg, Joseph & Manski, Charles F. & Williams, Jared, 2009. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 30-41.
    5. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Weale, Martin, 2006. "Survey Expectations," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 715-776, Elsevier.
    6. Anne Sofie Jore & James Mitchell & Shaun P. Vahey, 2010. "Combining forecast densities from VARs with uncertain instabilities," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 621-634.
    7. Hansen, Peter Reinhard, 2005. "A Test for Superior Predictive Ability," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 365-380, October.
    8. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2008. "Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Prediction: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1107-1127, July.
    9. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    10. Clements, Michael P. & Harvey, David I., 2011. "Combining probability forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 208-223, April.
    11. Hall, Stephen G. & Mitchell, James, 2007. "Combining density forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-13.
    12. Laura Coroneo & David Veredas, 2012. "A simple two-component model for the distribution of intraday returns," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(9), pages 775-797, October.
    13. Christian Kascha & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2010. "Combining inflation density forecasts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 231-250.
    14. Koenker,Roger, 2005. "Quantile Regression," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521845731.
    15. Timmermann, Allan, 2006. "Forecast Combinations," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 135-196, Elsevier.
    16. Geweke, John & Amisano, Gianni, 2011. "Optimal prediction pools," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 130-141, September.
    17. Bomberger, William A, 1996. "Disagreement as a Measure of Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(3), pages 381-392, August.
    18. Gneiting, Tilmann & Raftery, Adrian E., 2007. "Strictly Proper Scoring Rules, Prediction, and Estimation," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 102, pages 359-378, March.
    19. Kajal Lahiri & Xuguang Sheng, 2010. "Measuring forecast uncertainty by disagreement: The missing link," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 514-538.
    20. Kenneth F. Wallis, 2005. "Combining Density and Interval Forecasts: A Modest Proposal," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 67(s1), pages 983-994, December.
    21. Nolte, Ingmar & Pohlmeier, Winfried, 2007. "Using forecasts of forecasters to forecast," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 15-28.
    22. Jeremy Smith & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2009. "A Simple Explanation of the Forecast Combination Puzzle," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(3), pages 331-355, June.
    23. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    24. Zarnowitz, Victor & Lambros, Louis A, 1987. "Consensus and Uncertainty in Economic Prediction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 591-621, June.
    25. Stock J.H. & Watson M.W., 2002. "Forecasting Using Principal Components From a Large Number of Predictors," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 97, pages 1167-1179, December.
    26. Jose, Victor Richmond R. & Winkler, Robert L., 2008. "Simple robust averages of forecasts: Some empirical results," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 163-169.
    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. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    2. Krüger, Fabian & Nolte, Ingmar, 2016. "Disagreement versus uncertainty: Evidence from distribution forecasts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(S), pages 172-186.
    3. Li, Li & Kang, Yanfei & Li, Feng, 2023. "Bayesian forecast combination using time-varying features," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1287-1302.
    4. Barbara Rossi, 2019. "Forecasting in the presence of instabilities: How do we know whether models predict well and how to improve them," Economics Working Papers 1711, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2021.
    5. Clements, Michael P., 2018. "Are macroeconomic density forecasts informative?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 181-198.
    6. Malte Knüppel & Fabian Krüger, 2022. "Forecast uncertainty, disagreement, and the linear pool," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(1), pages 23-41, January.
    7. Wang, Xiaoqian & Hyndman, Rob J. & Li, Feng & Kang, Yanfei, 2023. "Forecast combinations: An over 50-year review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1518-1547.
    8. Weron, Rafał, 2014. "Electricity price forecasting: A review of the state-of-the-art with a look into the future," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1030-1081.
    9. Kajal Lahiri & Huaming Peng & Xuguang Simon Sheng, 2022. "Measuring Uncertainty of a Combined Forecast and Some Tests for Forecaster Heterogeneity," Advances in Econometrics, in: Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran: Prediction and Macro Modeling, volume 43, pages 29-50, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    10. Huisman, Ronald & Van der Sar, Nico L. & Zwinkels, Remco C.J., 2021. "Volatility expectations and disagreement," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 379-393.
    11. Davide Pettenuzzo & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2016. "Optimal Portfolio Choice Under Decision‐Based Model Combinations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(7), pages 1312-1332, November.
    12. Anne Sofie Jore & James Mitchell & Shaun P. Vahey, 2010. "Combining forecast densities from VARs with uncertain instabilities," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 621-634.
    13. Knut Are Aastveit & Francesco Ravazzolo & Herman K. van Dijk, 2018. "Combined Density Nowcasting in an Uncertain Economic Environment," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 131-145, January.
    14. Bjørnland, Hilde C. & Ravazzolo, Francesco & Thorsrud, Leif Anders, 2017. "Forecasting GDP with global components: This time is different," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 153-173.
    15. Conflitti, Cristina & De Mol, Christine & Giannone, Domenico, 2015. "Optimal combination of survey forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1096-1103.
    16. Martin, Gael M. & Loaiza-Maya, Rubén & Maneesoonthorn, Worapree & Frazier, David T. & Ramírez-Hassan, Andrés, 2022. "Optimal probabilistic forecasts: When do they work?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 384-406.
    17. Garratt, Anthony & Mitchell, James & Vahey, Shaun P. & Wakerly, Elizabeth C., 2011. "Real-time inflation forecast densities from ensemble Phillips curves," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 77-87, January.
    18. Constantin Burgi, 2016. "What Do We Lose When We Average Expectations?," Working Papers 2016-013, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    19. Victor Lopez-Perez, 2016. "Macroeconomic Forecast Uncertainty In The Euro Area," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 11(1), pages 9-41, March.
    20. Federico Bassetti & Roberto Casarin & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2019. "Density Forecasting," BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series BEMPS59, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Disagreement; Uncertainty; Predictive Density; Forecast Combination;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
    • F - International Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:knz:dpteco:1143. 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: Office Ursprung (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwkonde.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.