IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedhwp/wp-2016-05.html

Forecasting Economic Activity with Mixed Frequency Bayesian VARs

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Brave
  • R. Andrew Butters
  • Alejandro Justiniano

Abstract

Mixed frequency Bayesian vector autoregressions (MF-BVARs) allow forecasters to incorporate a large number of mixed frequency indicators into forecasts of economic activity. This paper evaluates the forecast performance of MF-BVARs relative to surveys of professional forecasters and investigates the influence of certain specification choices on this performance. We leverage a novel real-time dataset to conduct an out-of-sample forecasting exercise for U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP). MF-BVARs are shown to provide an attractive alternative to surveys of professional forecasters for forecasting GDP growth. However, certain specification choices such as model size and prior selection can affect their relative performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Brave & R. Andrew Butters & Alejandro Justiniano, 2016. "Forecasting Economic Activity with Mixed Frequency Bayesian VARs," Working Paper Series WP-2016-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2016-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/working-papers/2016/wp2016-05-pdf.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roberto S. Mariano & Yasutomo Murasawa, 2003. "A new coincident index of business cycles based on monthly and quarterly series," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(4), pages 427-443.
    2. Scott Brave & R. Andrew Butters, 2012. "Diagnosing the Financial System: Financial Conditions and Financial Stress," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 8(2), pages 191-239, June.
    3. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2016. "Common Drifting Volatility in Large Bayesian VARs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 375-390, July.
    4. Scott Brave & R. Andrew Butters, 2014. "Nowcasting Using the Chicago Fed National Activity Index," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q I, pages 19-37.
    5. Geweke, John, 2001. "Bayesian econometrics and forecasting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 11-15, January.
    6. Frank Schorfheide & Dongho Song, 2015. "Real-Time Forecasting With a Mixed-Frequency VAR," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 366-380, July.
    7. 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.
    8. Tommaso Proietti, 2006. "Temporal disaggregation by state space methods: Dynamic regression methods revisited," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 9(3), pages 357-372, November.
    9. 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.
    10. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2004. "The MIDAS Touch: Mixed Data Sampling Regression Models," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt9mf223rs, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    11. Sims, Christopher A & Zha, Tao, 1998. "Bayesian Methods for Dynamic Multivariate Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 949-968, November.
    12. 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.
    13. Aruoba, S. BoraÄŸan & Diebold, Francis X. & Scotti, Chiara, 2009. "Real-Time Measurement of Business Conditions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 417-427.
    14. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    15. Scott Brave & R. Andrew Butters, 2010. "Chicago Fed National Activity Index turns ten - analyzing its first decade of performance," Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Apr.
    16. Ghysels, Eric, 2016. "Macroeconomics and the reality of mixed frequency data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 193(2), pages 294-314.
    17. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2013. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    18. Gary M. Koop, 2013. "Forecasting with Medium and Large Bayesian VARS," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 177-203, March.
    19. 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.
    20. Roberto S. Mariano & Yasutomo Murasawa, 2010. "A Coincident Index, Common Factors, and Monthly Real GDP," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(1), pages 27-46, February.
    21. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2015. "Prior Selection for Vector Autoregressions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(2), pages 436-451, May.
    22. Andrea Carriero & George Kapetanios & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2011. "Forecasting large datasets with Bayesian reduced rank multivariate models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(5), pages 735-761, August.
    23. Raffaella Giacomini & Halbert White, 2006. "Tests of Conditional Predictive Ability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1545-1578, November.
    24. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/13388 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Durbin, James & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2012. "Time Series Analysis by State Space Methods," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199641178.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Econometrics > Forecasting > Nowcasting
    2. > Econometrics > Time Series Models > VAR Models > Bayesian Vector autoregressions (BVARs)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miranda-Agrippino, Silvia & Ricco, Giovanni, 2018. "Bayesian Vector Autoregressions," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1159, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Gefang, Deborah & Koop, Gary & Poon, Aubrey, 2020. "Computationally efficient inference in large Bayesian mixed frequency VARs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    3. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell & Aubrey Poon, 2018. "Regional Output Growth in the United Kingdom: More Timely and Higher Frequency Estimates, 1970-2017," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2018-14, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    4. Brandyn Bok & Daniele Caratelli & Domenico Giannone & Argia M. Sbordone & Andrea Tambalotti, 2018. "Macroeconomic Nowcasting and Forecasting with Big Data," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 10(1), pages 615-643, August.
    5. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell & Aubrey Poon, 2020. "Regional output growth in the United Kingdom: More timely and higher frequency estimates from 1970," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 176-197, March.
    6. Thomas B Götz & Klemens Hauzenberger, 2021. "Large mixed-frequency VARs with a parsimonious time-varying parameter structure," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 24(3), pages 442-461.
    7. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell, 2018. "UK regional nowcasting using a mixed frequency vector autoregressive model," Working Papers 1805, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    8. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/27od5pb99881folvtfs8s3k16l is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Cimadomo, Jacopo & Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele & Monti, Francesca & Sokol, Andrej, 2022. "Nowcasting with large Bayesian vector autoregressions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 500-519.
    10. Kerry Loaiza-Marín, 2022. "Nowcasting the Costa Rican Quarterly Output Growth," Documentos de Trabajo 2107, Banco Central de Costa Rica.
    11. Knotek, Edward S. & Zaman, Saeed, 2019. "Financial nowcasts and their usefulness in macroeconomic forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1708-1724.
    12. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell, 2020. "UK regional nowcasting using a mixed frequency vector auto‐regressive model with entropic tilting," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(1), pages 91-119, January.

    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. Brave, Scott A. & Butters, R. Andrew & Justiniano, Alejandro, 2019. "Forecasting economic activity with mixed frequency BVARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1692-1707.
    2. 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, July.
    3. Ankargren Sebastian & Unosson Måns & Yang Yukai, 2020. "A Flexible Mixed-Frequency Vector Autoregression with a Steady-State Prior," Journal of Time Series Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 1-41, July.
    4. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2015. "Realtime nowcasting with a Bayesian mixed frequency model with stochastic volatility," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(4), pages 837-862, October.
    5. Cimadomo, Jacopo & Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele & Monti, Francesca & Sokol, Andrej, 2022. "Nowcasting with large Bayesian vector autoregressions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 500-519.
    6. Prüser, Jan, 2023. "Data-based priors for vector error correction models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 209-227.
    7. 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.
    8. Chan, Joshua C.C., 2021. "Minnesota-type adaptive hierarchical priors for large Bayesian VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1212-1226.
    9. Bańbura, Marta & Giannone, Domenico & Lenza, Michele, 2015. "Conditional forecasts and scenario analysis with vector autoregressions for large cross-sections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 739-756.
    10. Markus Heinrich & Magnus Reif, 2018. "Forecasting using mixed-frequency VARs with time-varying parameters," ifo Working Paper Series 273, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    11. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2016. "Large Vector Autoregressions with Stochastic Volatility and Flexible Priors," Working Papers (Old Series) 1617, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    12. Carriero, Andrea & Clark, Todd E. & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2019. "Large Bayesian vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility and non-conjugate priors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 212(1), pages 137-154.
    13. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2021. "No‐arbitrage priors, drifting volatilities, and the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(5), pages 495-516, August.
    14. Heinrich, Markus, 2020. "Does the Current State of the Business Cycle matter for Real-Time Forecasting? A Mixed-Frequency Threshold VAR approach," EconStor Preprints 219312, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    15. Sebastian Ankargren & Måns Unosson & Yukai Yang, 2018. "A mixed-frequency Bayesian vector autoregression with a steady-state prior," CREATES Research Papers 2018-32, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    16. 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.
    17. Andrea Carriero & Davide Pettenuzzo & Shubhranshu Shekhar, 2024. "Macroeconomic Forecasting with Large Language Models," Papers 2407.00890, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.
    18. Dimitrios P. Louzis, 2019. "Steady‐state modeling and macroeconomic forecasting quality," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(2), pages 285-314, March.
    19. Knotek, Edward S. & Zaman, Saeed, 2019. "Financial nowcasts and their usefulness in macroeconomic forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1708-1724.
    20. Joshua C. C. Chan & Liana Jacobi & Dan Zhu, 2020. "Efficient selection of hyperparameters in large Bayesian VARs using automatic differentiation," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(6), pages 934-943, September.

    More about this item

    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
    • 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

    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:fip:fedhwp:wp-2016-05. 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: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.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.