IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/0450.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forecasting UK GDP growth, inflation and interest rates under structural change: a comparison of models with time-varying parameters

Author

Listed:
  • Barnett, Alina

    (Bank of England)

  • Mumtaz, Haroon

    (Bank of England)

  • Theodoridis, Konstantinos

    (Bank of England)

Abstract

Evidence from a large and growing empirical literature strongly suggests that there have been changes in inflation and output dynamics in the United Kingdom. This is largely based on a class of econometric models that allow for time-variation in coefficients and volatilities of shocks. While these have been used extensively to study evolving dynamics and for structural analysis, there is little evidence on their usefulness in forecasting UK output growth, inflation and the short-term interest rate. This paper attempts to fill this gap by comparing the performance of a wide variety of time-varying parameter models in forecasting output growth, inflation and a short rate. We find that allowing for time-varying parameters can lead to large and statistically significant gains in forecast accuracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Barnett, Alina & Mumtaz, Haroon & Theodoridis, Konstantinos, 2012. "Forecasting UK GDP growth, inflation and interest rates under structural change: a comparison of models with time-varying parameters," Bank of England working papers 450, Bank of England.
  • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:0450
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2012/forecasting-uk-gdp-growth-inflation-interest-rates-under-structural-change.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marta Banbura & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Large Bayesian vector auto regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 71-92.
    2. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 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.
    3. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2005. "Drift and Volatilities: Monetary Policies and Outcomes in the Post WWII U.S," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(2), pages 262-302, April.
    4. Eklund, Jana & Kapetanios, George & Price, Simon, 2010. "Forecasting in the presence of recent structural change," Bank of England working papers 406, Bank of England.
    5. 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.
    6. Tatevik Sekhposyan & Barbara Rossi, 2008. "Has modelsí forecasting performance for US output growth and inflation changed over time, and when?," Working Papers 09-02, Duke University, Department of Economics.
    7. Malin Adolfson & Jesper Linde & Mattias Villani, 2007. "Forecasting Performance of an Open Economy DSGE Model," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 289-328.
    8. Jana Eklund & Sune Karlsson, 2007. "Forecast Combination and Model Averaging Using Predictive Measures," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2-4), pages 329-363.
    9. Ferrara, Laurent & Marcellino, Massimiliano & Mogliani, Matteo, 2015. "Macroeconomic forecasting during the Great Recession: The return of non-linearity?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 664-679.
    10. Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2005. "Time Varying Structural Vector Autoregressions and Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 821-852.
    11. Gonçalves, Sílvia & White, Halbert, 2002. "The Bootstrap Of The Mean For Dependent Heterogeneous Arrays," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(6), pages 1367-1384, December.
    12. M. Hashem Pesaran & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2006. "Forecasting Time Series Subject to Multiple Structural Breaks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 1057-1084.
    13. Groen, Jan J J & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2008. "Investigating the structural stability of the Phillips curve relationship," Bank of England working papers 350, Bank of England.
    14. Todd E. Clark & Michael W. McCracken, 2009. "Improving Forecast Accuracy By Combining Recursive And Rolling Forecasts," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 363-395, May.
    15. Nathan S. Balke, 2000. "Credit and Economic Activity: Credit Regimes and Nonlinear Propagation of Shocks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(2), pages 344-349, May.
    16. Engemann, Kristie M. & Owyang, Michael T., 2010. "Whatever Happened To The Business Cycle? A Bayesian Analysis Of Jobless Recoveries," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(5), pages 709-726, November.
    17. Timothy Cogley & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Thomas J. Sargent, 2010. "Inflation-Gap Persistence in the US," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 43-69, January.
    18. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    19. Antonello D'Agostino & Luca Gambetti & Domenico Giannone, 2013. "Macroeconomic forecasting and structural change," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 82-101, January.
    20. Luca Benati & Paolo Surico, 2008. "Evolving U.S. Monetary Policy and The Decline of Inflation Predictability," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 634-646, 04-05.
    21. Rossi, Barbara & Sekhposyan, Tatevik, 2010. "Have economic models' forecasting performance for US output growth and inflation changed over time, and when?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 808-835, October.
    22. Luca Benati, 2008. "The "Great Moderation" in the United Kingdom," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(1), pages 121-147, February.
    23. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2002. "Evolving Post-World War II US Inflation Dynamics," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2001, Volume 16, pages 331-388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Erratum to "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?"," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1849-1849, October.
    25. Chib, Siddhartha, 1998. "Estimation and comparison of multiple change-point models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 221-241, June.
    26. Raffaella Giacomini & Barbara Rossi, 2010. "Forecast comparisons in unstable environments," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 595-620.
    27. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "How did leading indicator forecasts perform during the 2001 recession?," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 89(Sum), pages 71-90.
    28. Eickmeier, Sandra & Lemke, Wolfgang & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2011. "Classical time-varying FAVAR models - estimation, forecasting and structural analysis," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2011,04, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    29. Haroon Mumtaz & Laura Sunder‐Plassmann, 2013. "Time‐Varying Dynamics Of The Real Exchange Rate: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 498-525, April.
    30. Cathy W. S. Chen & Jack C. Lee, 1995. "Bayesian Inference Of Threshold Autoregressive Models," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(5), pages 483-492, September.
    31. Goncalves, Silvia & White, Halbert, 2004. "Maximum likelihood and the bootstrap for nonlinear dynamic models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 199-219, March.
    32. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2008. "Anticipated Utility And Rational Expectations As Approximations Of Bayesian Decision Making," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(1), pages 185-221, February.
    33. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2015. "Bayesian VARs: Specification Choices and Forecast Accuracy," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 46-73, January.
    34. 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.
    35. 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.
    36. Chen, Cathy W. S., 1998. "A Bayesian analysis of generalized threshold autoregressive models," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 15-22, September.
    37. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    38. Baumeister, Christiane & Benati, Luca, 2010. "Unconventional monetary policy and the great recession - Estimating the impact of a compression in the yield spread at the zero lower bound," Working Paper Series 1258, European Central Bank.
    39. Hedibert F. Lopes & Esther Salazar, 2006. "Bayesian Model Uncertainty In Smooth Transition Autoregressions," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 99-117, January.
    40. Baumeister, Christiane & Liu, Philip & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2010. "Changes in the transmission of monetary policy: evidence from a time-varying factor-augmented VAR," Bank of England working papers 401, Bank of England.
    41. Ben S. Bernanke & Jean Boivin & Piotr Eliasz, 2005. "Measuring the Effects of Monetary Policy: A Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 387-422.
    42. Baumeister, Christiane & Liu, Philip & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2013. "Changes in the effects of monetary policy on disaggregate price dynamics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 543-560.
    43. Marta Banbura & Domenico Giannone & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Large Bayesian vector auto regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 71-92.
    44. Mark W. Watson & James H. Stock, 2004. "Combination forecasts of output growth in a seven-country data set," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 405-430.
    45. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    46. Chib S. & Jeliazkov I., 2001. "Marginal Likelihood From the Metropolis-Hastings Output," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 96, pages 270-281, March.
    47. Clements, Michael P & Hendry, David F, 1995. "Forecasting in Cointegration Systems," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(2), pages 127-146, April-Jun.
    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. Magnus Reif, 2020. "Macroeconomics, Nonlinearities, and the Business Cycle," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 87.
    2. Mandalinci, Zeyyad, 2017. "Forecasting inflation in emerging markets: An evaluation of alternative models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 1082-1104.
    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, 2015. "Forecasting in Nonstationary Environments: What Works and What Doesn't in Reduced-Form and Structural Models," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 207-229, August.
    5. Karlsson, Sune, 2013. "Forecasting with Bayesian Vector Autoregression," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 791-897, Elsevier.
    6. Andrea Carriero & Francesco Corsello & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2022. "The global component of inflation volatility," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(4), pages 700-721, June.
    7. 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.
    8. Stelios Bekiros & Alessia Paccagnini, 2013. "On the predictability of time-varying VAR and DSGE models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 635-664, August.
    9. Sims, Christopher A. & Waggoner, Daniel F. & Zha, Tao, 2008. "Methods for inference in large multiple-equation Markov-switching models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 255-274, October.
    10. Rachidi Kotchoni & Maxime Leroux & Dalibor Stevanovic, 2019. "Macroeconomic forecast accuracy in a data‐rich environment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(7), pages 1050-1072, November.
    11. Didier Nibbering & Richard Paap & Michel van der Wel, 2016. "A Bayesian Infinite Hidden Markov Vector Autoregressive Model," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-107/III, Tinbergen Institute, revised 13 Oct 2017.
    12. Hauzenberger, Niko, 2021. "Flexible Mixture Priors for Large Time-varying Parameter Models," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 87-108.
    13. Pablo Guerróon‐Quintana & Molin Zhong, 2023. "Macroeconomic forecasting in times of crises," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 295-320, April.
    14. Marta Banbura & Andries van Vlodrop, 2018. "Forecasting with Bayesian Vector Autoregressions with Time Variation in the Mean," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-025/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    15. 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.
    16. Philippe Goulet Coulombe, 2020. "The Macroeconomy as a Random Forest," Papers 2006.12724, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.
    17. Nima Nonejad, 2021. "An Overview Of Dynamic Model Averaging Techniques In Time‐Series Econometrics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 566-614, April.
    18. Clark, Todd E. & Davig, Troy, 2011. "Decomposing the declining volatility of long-term inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 981-999, July.
    19. Mawuli Segnon & Rangan Gupta & Stelios Bekiros & Mark E. Wohar, 2018. "Forecasting US GNP growth: The role of uncertainty," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 541-559, August.
    20. Niko Hauzenberger, 2020. "Flexible Mixture Priors for Large Time-varying Parameter Models," Papers 2006.10088, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2020.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Time-varying parameters; stochastic volatility; VAR; FAVAR; forecasting; Bayesian estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:boe:boeewp:0450. 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: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.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.