IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ksp/journ1/v3y2016i2p340-349.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Automating Analytics: Forecasting Time Series in Economics and Business

Author

Listed:
  • Anton Antonov GERUNOV

    (Sofia University, Bulgaria..)

Abstract

With the growing ability of organizations in the public and private sector to collect large volumes of real-time data, the mounting pile of information presents specific challenges for storage, processing, and analysis. Many organizations do need data analysis for the purposes of planning and logistics. Likewise, governments and regulators will need analysis to support policy-making, implementation and controlling. All this leads to the importance of being able to generate large-scale analytics under (sometimes severe) resource constraints. This paper investigates a possible solution – automating analytics with a special focus on forecasting time series. Such approach has the benefit of being able to produce scalable forecasting of thousands of variables with relatively high accuracy for a short period of time and few resources. We first review the literature on time series forecasting with a particular focus on the M, M-2, and M-3 forecasting competition and outline a few major conclusions supported across different empirical studies. The paper then proceeds to explore the typical structure of a time-series variables using Bulgarian GDP growth and show how the ARIMA modeling with a seasonal component can be used to fit economic data of this class. We also review some major approaches to automating forecasting and outline the benefits of selecting the optimal model from a large set of ARIMA alternatives using an information criterion. A possible approach to fit an automated forecasting algorithm on four crucial economic time series from the Bulgarian economy is demonstrated. We use data on GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, and interest rates and fit a large number of possible models. The best ones are selected by taking recourse to the Akaike Information Criterion. The optimal ARIMA models are studied and commented. Forecast accuracy metrics are presented and a few major conclusions and possible model applications are outlined. The paper concludes with directions for further research.

Suggested Citation

  • Anton Antonov GERUNOV, 2016. "Automating Analytics: Forecasting Time Series in Economics and Business," Journal of Economics and Political Economy, KSP Journals, vol. 3(2), pages 340-349, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:ksp:journ1:v:3:y:2016:i:2:p:340-349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kspjournals.org/index.php/JEPE/article/download/790/860
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.kspjournals.org/index.php/JEPE/article/view/790/860
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Makridakis, Spyros & Hibon, Michele, 2000. "The M3-Competition: results, conclusions and implications," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 451-476.
    2. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    3. Adya, Monica & Collopy, Fred & Armstrong, J. Scott & Kennedy, Miles, 2001. "Automatic identification of time series features for rule-based forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 143-157.
    4. Melard, G. & Pasteels, J. -M., 2000. "Automatic ARIMA modeling including interventions, using time series expert software," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 497-508.
    5. Guy Melard & Jean-Michel Pasteels, 2000. "Automatic ARIMA modeling including interventions, using time series expert software," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/13744, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    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. Saša Obradoviæ & Lela Ristiæ & Nemanja Lojanica, 2018. "Are unemployment rates stationary for SEE10 countries? Evidence from linear and nonlinear dynamics," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 36(2), pages 559-583.

    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. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    2. Nghia Chu & Binh Dao & Nga Pham & Huy Nguyen & Hien Tran, 2022. "Predicting Mutual Funds' Performance using Deep Learning and Ensemble Techniques," Papers 2209.09649, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    3. Mamadou-Diéne Diop & Jules Sadefo Kamdem, 2023. "Multiscale Agricultural Commodities Forecasting Using Wavelet-SARIMA Process," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 21(1), pages 1-40, March.
    4. Fildes, Robert & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2015. "Simple versus complex selection rules for forecasting many time series," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(8), pages 1692-1701.
    5. Thiyanga S Talagala & Rob J Hyndman & George Athanasopoulos, 2018. "Meta-learning how to forecast time series," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 6/18, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    6. Han, Weiwei & Wang, Xun & Petropoulos, Fotios & Wang, Jing, 2019. "Brain imaging and forecasting: Insights from judgmental model selection," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-9.
    7. Mirakyan, Atom & Meyer-Renschhausen, Martin & Koch, Andreas, 2017. "Composite forecasting approach, application for next-day electricity price forecasting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 228-237.
    8. Fildes, Robert & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2013. "An evaluation of simple forecasting model selection rules," MPRA Paper 51772, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Makridakis, Spyros & Hyndman, Rob J. & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2020. "Forecasting in social settings: The state of the art," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 15-28.
    10. repec:jss:jstsof:27:i03 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. George Athanasopoulos & D. Poskitt & Farshid Vahid, 2012. "Two Canonical VARMA Forms: Scalar Component Models Vis-à-Vis the Echelon Form," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 60-83.
    12. Kang, Yanfei & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Athiniotis, Nikolaos & Li, Feng & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2021. "Déjà vu: A data-centric forecasting approach through time series cross-similarity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 719-731.
    13. Song, Haiyan & Gao, Bastian Z. & Lin, Vera S., 2013. "Combining statistical and judgmental forecasts via a web-based tourism demand forecasting system," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 295-310.
    14. De Gooijer, Jan G. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2006. "25 years of time series forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 443-473.
    15. Jan G. De Gooijer & Rob J. Hyndman, 2005. "25 Years of IIF Time Series Forecasting: A Selective Review," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 12/05, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    16. Fotios Petropoulos & Enno Siemsen, 2023. "Forecast Selection and Representativeness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 2672-2690, May.
    17. Hewamalage, Hansika & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bandara, Kasun, 2021. "Recurrent Neural Networks for Time Series Forecasting: Current status and future directions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 388-427.
    18. Hyndman, Rob J. & Ahmed, Roman A. & Athanasopoulos, George & Shang, Han Lin, 2011. "Optimal combination forecasts for hierarchical time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 2579-2589, September.
    19. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Trapero, Juan R., 2014. "Improving forecasting by estimating time series structural components across multiple frequencies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 291-302.
    20. de Silva, Ashton J, 2010. "Forecasting Australian Macroeconomic variables, evaluating innovations state space approaches," MPRA Paper 27411, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Alysha M De Livera, 2010. "Automatic forecasting with a modified exponential smoothing state space framework," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 10/10, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Automated analytics; Forecasting; Time series; ARIMA; Business forecasting.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:ksp:journ1:v:3:y:2016:i:2:p:340-349. 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: Bilal KARGI (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.kspjournals.org .

    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.