IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intfor/v40y2024i3p918-941.html

Comparing forecasting performance with panel data

Author

Listed:
  • Qu, Ritong
  • Timmermann, Allan
  • Zhu, Yinchu

Abstract

We develop new methods for testing equal predictive accuracy for panels of forecasts, exploiting information in both the time-series and cross-sectional dimensions of the data. We examine general tests of equal forecasting performance averaged across all time periods and individual units, along with tests that focus on subsets of time or clusters of units. Properties of our tests are demonstrated through Monte Carlo simulations and in an empirical application that compares International Monetary Fund forecasts of country-level real gross domestic product growth and inflation to private-sector survey forecasts and forecasts from a simple time-series model.

Suggested Citation

  • Qu, Ritong & Timmermann, Allan & Zhu, Yinchu, 2024. "Comparing forecasting performance with panel data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 918-941.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:40:y:2024:i:3:p:918-941
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2023.08.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207023000766
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2023.08.001?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. West, Kenneth D, 1996. "Asymptotic Inference about Predictive Ability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1067-1084, September.
    2. Graham Elliott & Allan Timmermann & Ivana Komunjer, 2005. "Estimation and Testing of Forecast Rationality under Flexible Loss," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 1107-1125.
    3. Keane, Michael P & Runkle, David E, 1990. "Testing the Rationality of Price Forecasts: New Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 714-735, September.
    4. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Schuermann, Til & Smith, L. Vanessa, 2009. "Forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 642-675, October.
    5. Allan Timmermann, 2007. "An Evaluation of the World Economic Outlook Forecasts," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 54(1), pages 1-33, May.
    6. Rustam Ibragimov & Ulrich K. Müller, 2016. "Inference with Few Heterogeneous Clusters," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 83-96, March.
    7. Baltagi, Badi H., 2013. "Panel Data Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 995-1024, Elsevier.
    8. Loungani, Prakash, 2001. "How accurate are private sector forecasts? Cross-country evidence from consensus forecasts of output growth," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 419-432.
    9. McCracken, Michael W., 2007. "Asymptotics for out of sample tests of Granger causality," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 719-752, October.
    10. Faust, Jon & Wright, Jonathan H., 2013. "Forecasting Inflation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2-56, Elsevier.
    11. Patton, Andrew J. & Timmermann, Allan, 2010. "Why do forecasters disagree? Lessons from the term structure of cross-sectional dispersion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 803-820, October.
    12. Andrew J. Patton & Allan Timmermann, 2011. "Predictability of Output Growth and Inflation: A Multi-Horizon Survey Approach," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 397-410, July.
    13. Andrew Patton & Allan Timmermann, 2012. "Forecast Rationality Tests Based on Multi-Horizon Bounds," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 1-17.
    14. Ivan A. Canay & Joseph P. Romano & Azeem M. Shaikh, 2017. "Randomization Tests Under an Approximate Symmetry Assumption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1013-1030, May.
    15. Davies, Anthony & Lahiri, Kajal, 1995. "A new framework for analyzing survey forecasts using three-dimensional panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 205-227, July.
    16. Timmermann, Allan & Qu, Ritong & Zhu, Yinchu, 2019. "Do Any Economists Have Superior Forecasting Skills?," CEPR Discussion Papers 14112, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. 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.
    18. Raffaella Giacomini & Halbert White, 2006. "Tests of Conditional Predictive Ability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1545-1578, November.
    19. Whitney Newey & Kenneth West, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    20. Akgun, Oguzhan & Pirotte, Alain & Urga, Giovanni & Yang, Zhenlin, 2024. "Equal predictive ability tests based on panel data with applications to OECD and IMF forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 202-228.
    21. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2001. "Tests of equal forecast accuracy and encompassing for nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 85-110, November.
    22. Ibragimov, Rustam & Müller, Ulrich K., 2010. "t-Statistic Based Correlation and Heterogeneity Robust Inference," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 28(4), pages 453-468.
    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. Philippe Goulet Coulombe & Massimiliano Marcellino & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2025. "Panel Machine Learning with Mixed-Frequency Data: Monitoring State-Level Fiscal Variables," Working Papers 25-04, Chair in macroeconomics and forecasting, University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management, revised May 2025.
    2. Oguzhan Akgun & Alain Pirotte & Giovanni Urga & Zhenlin Yang, 2025. "Testing Clustered Equal Predictive Ability with Unknown Clusters," Papers 2507.14621, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.

    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. Timmermann, Allan & Zhu, Yinchu, 2019. "Comparing Forecasting Performance with Panel Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 13746, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Qu, Ritong & Timmermann, Allan & Zhu, Yinchu, 2023. "Comparing forecasting performance in cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 237(2).
    3. Rossi, Barbara, 2013. "Advances in Forecasting under Instability," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1203-1324, Elsevier.
    4. Raffaella Giacomini & Barbara Rossi, 2013. "Forecasting in macroeconomics," Chapters, in: Nigar Hashimzade & Michael A. Thornton (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Macroeconomics, chapter 17, pages 381-408, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Clark, Todd & McCracken, Michael, 2013. "Advances in Forecast Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1107-1201, Elsevier.
    6. 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.
    7. Nathan Goldstein & Ben‐Zion Zilberfarb, 2023. "The closer we get, the better we are?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(2), pages 364-376, April.
    8. Kontogeorgos, Georgios & Lambrias, Kyriacos, 2019. "An analysis of the Eurosystem/ECB projections," Working Paper Series 2291, European Central Bank.
    9. Timmermann, Allan & Qu, Ritong & Zhu, Yinchu, 2019. "Do Any Economists Have Superior Forecasting Skills?," CEPR Discussion Papers 14112, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Corradi, Valentina & Fosten, Jack & Gutknecht, Daniel, 2024. "Predictive ability tests with possibly overlapping models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 241(1).
    11. 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.
    12. Mayer, Walter J. & Liu, Feng & Dang, Xin, 2017. "Improving the power of the Diebold–Mariano–West test for least squares predictions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 618-626.
    13. Firmin Doko Tchatoka & Qazi Haque, 2023. "On bootstrapping tests of equal forecast accuracy for nested models," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(7), pages 1844-1864, November.
    14. Pablo Pincheira Brown & Nicolás Hardy, 2024. "Correlation‐based tests of predictability," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(6), pages 1835-1858, September.
    15. Pincheira, Pablo M. & West, Kenneth D., 2016. "A comparison of some out-of-sample tests of predictability in iterated multi-step-ahead forecasts," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 304-319.
    16. Busetti, Fabio & Marcucci, Juri, 2013. "Comparing forecast accuracy: A Monte Carlo investigation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 13-27.
    17. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2009. "Tests of Equal Predictive Ability With Real-Time Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 441-454.
    18. Daniel Borup & Jonas N. Eriksen & Mads M. Kjær & Martin Thyrsgaard, 2024. "Predicting Bond Return Predictability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(2), pages 931-951, February.
    19. Graham Elliott & Allan Timmermann, 2016. "Forecasting in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 81-110, October.
    20. Valentina Corradi & Norman Swanson, 2004. "Bootstrap Procedures for Recursive Estimation Schemes With Applications to Forecast Model Selection," Departmental Working Papers 200418, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:eee:intfor:v:40:y:2024:i:3:p:918-941. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijforecast .

    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.