IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2015-030.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Real-Time Forecasting and Scenario Analysis using a Large Mixed-Frequency Bayesian VAR

Author

Abstract

We use a mixed-frequency vector autoregression to obtain intraquarter point and density forecasts as new, high frequency information becomes available. This model, delineated in Ghysels (2016), is specified at the lowest sampling frequency; high frequency observations are treated as different economic series occurring at the low frequency. As this type of data stacking results in a high-dimensional system, we rely on Bayesian shrinkage to mitigate parameter proliferation. We obtain high-frequency updates to forecasts by treating new data releases as conditioning information. The same framework is used for scenario analysis to obtain forecasts conditional on a hypothetical future path of the variables in the system. We show that the methodology results in competitive point and density forecasts and illustrate the usefulness of the methodology by providing forecasts of real GDP growth given hypothetical paths of a central bank policy rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael W. McCracken & Michael T. Owyang & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2015. "Real-Time Forecasting and Scenario Analysis using a Large Mixed-Frequency Bayesian VAR," Working Papers 2015-030, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 10 Apr 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2015-030
    DOI: 10.20955/wp.2015.030
    Note: Publisher URL: https://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb21q5a8.pdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2015/2015-030.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/wp.2015.030?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2002. "Determining the Number of Factors in Approximate Factor Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, January.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148, Elsevier.
    5. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2006. "A comparison of direct and iterated multistep AR methods for forecasting macroeconomic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1-2), pages 499-526.
    6. Kuzin, Vladimir & Marcellino, Massimiliano & Schumacher, Christian, 2011. "MIDAS vs. mixed-frequency VAR: Nowcasting GDP in the euro area," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 529-542.
    7. Ghysels, Eric & Hill, Jonathan B. & Motegi, Kaiji, 2016. "Testing for Granger causality with mixed frequency data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(1), pages 207-230.
    8. Thomas Gilbert & Chiara Scotti & Georg H. Strasser & Clara Vega, 2015. "Is the Intrinsic Value of Macroeconomic News Announcements Related to Their Asset Price Impact?," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 874, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 23 Apr 2015.
    9. Tilmann Gneiting & Roopesh Ranjan, 2011. "Comparing Density Forecasts Using Threshold- and Quantile-Weighted Scoring Rules," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 411-422, July.
    10. De Mol, Christine & Giannone, Domenico & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2008. "Forecasting using a large number of predictors: Is Bayesian shrinkage a valid alternative to principal components?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 318-328, October.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Bacchiocchi, Emanuele & Bastianin, Andrea & Missale, Alessandro & Rossi, Eduardo, 2016. "Structural analysis with mixed frequencies: monetary policy, uncertainty and gross capital flows," Working Papers 2016-04, Joint Research Centre, European Commission.
    15. Clark, Todd E. & Doh, Taeyoung, 2014. "Evaluating alternative models of trend inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 426-448.
    16. Peter A. Zadrozny, 1990. "Forecasting U.S. GNP at monthly intervals with an estimated bivariate time series model," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Nov, pages 2-15.
    17. Stefan Mittnik & Peter Zadrozny, 2005. "Forecasting Quarterly German GDP at Monthly Intervals Using Monthly Ifo Business Conditions Data," Contributions to Economics, in: Jan-Egbert Sturm & Timo Wollmershäuser (ed.), Ifo Survey Data in Business Cycle and Monetary Policy Analysis, pages 19-48, Springer.
    18. Foroni, Claudia & Guérin, Pierre & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2015. "Markov-switching mixed-frequency VAR models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 692-711.
    19. Gneiting, Tilmann & Ranjan, Roopesh, 2011. "Comparing Density Forecasts Using Threshold- and Quantile-Weighted Scoring Rules," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(3), pages 411-422.
    20. Blasques, F. & Koopman, S.J. & Mallee, M. & Zhang, Z., 2016. "Weighted maximum likelihood for dynamic factor analysis and forecasting with mixed frequency data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 193(2), pages 405-417.
    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. Gary Koop & Stuart McIntyre & James Mitchell & Aubrey Poon, 2022. "Using hierarchical aggregation constraints to nowcast regional economic aggregates," Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Discussion Papers ESCoE DP-2022-04, Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE).
    2. Edward S. Knotek & Saeed Zaman, 2024. "Nowcasting Inflation," Working Papers 24-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    3. Götz, Thomas B. & Hecq, Alain & Smeekes, Stephan, 2016. "Testing for Granger causality in large mixed-frequency VARs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 193(2), pages 418-432.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Berger, Tino & Morley, James & Wong, Benjamin, 2023. "Nowcasting the output gap," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 232(1), pages 18-34.
      • Tino Berger & James Morley & Benjamin Wong, 2020. "Nowcasting the output gap," CAMA Working Papers 2020-78, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    7. 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.
    8. Bańbura, Marta & Giannone, Domenico & Modugno, Michele & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2013. "Now-Casting and the Real-Time Data Flow," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 195-237, Elsevier.
    9. Joshua Chan, 2023. "BVARs and Stochastic Volatility," Papers 2310.14438, arXiv.org.
    10. Javier Sánchez García & Salvador Cruz Rambaud, 2022. "Machine Learning Regularization Methods in High-Dimensional Monetary and Financial VARs," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, March.
    11. Alain Hecq & Marie Ternes & Ines Wilms, 2023. "Hierarchical Regularizers for Reverse Unrestricted Mixed Data Sampling Regressions," Papers 2301.10592, arXiv.org.
    12. Boriss Siliverstovs, 2020. "Assessing nowcast accuracy of US GDP growth in real time: the role of booms and busts," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 7-27, January.
    13. Motegi, Kaiji & Sadahiro, Akira, 2018. "Sluggish private investment in Japan’s Lost Decade: Mixed frequency vector autoregression approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 118-128.

    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. Foroni, Claudia & Ravazzolo, Francesco & Rossini, Luca, 2019. "Forecasting daily electricity prices with monthly macroeconomic variables," Working Paper Series 2250, European Central Bank.
    3. Foroni, Claudia & Ravazzolo, Francesco & Rossini, Luca, 2023. "Are low frequency macroeconomic variables important for high frequency electricity prices?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    4. Markus Heinrich & Magnus Reif, 2020. "Real-Time Forecasting Using Mixed-Frequency VARS with Time-Varying Parameters," CESifo Working Paper Series 8054, CESifo.
    5. 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.
    6. Foroni, Claudia & Guérin, Pierre & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2018. "Using low frequency information for predicting high frequency variables," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 774-787.
    7. 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.
    8. Foroni, Claudia & Guérin, Pierre & Marcellino, Massimiliano, 2015. "Markov-switching mixed-frequency VAR models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 692-711.
    9. Berg, Tim O. & Henzel, Steffen R., 2015. "Point and density forecasts for the euro area using Bayesian VARs," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1067-1095.
    10. Thomas B. Götz & Alain W. Hecq, 2019. "Granger Causality Testing in Mixed‐Frequency VARs with Possibly (Co)Integrated Processes," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 914-935, November.
    11. Bjørn Eraker & Ching Wai (Jeremy) Chiu & Andrew T. Foerster & Tae Bong Kim & Hernán D. Seoane, 2015. "Bayesian Mixed Frequency VARs," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(3), pages 698-721.
    12. Chudik, Alexander & Grossman, Valerie & Pesaran, M. Hashem, 2016. "A multi-country approach to forecasting output growth using PMIs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(2), pages 349-365.
    13. Götz, Thomas B. & Hecq, Alain & Smeekes, Stephan, 2016. "Testing for Granger causality in large mixed-frequency VARs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 193(2), pages 418-432.
    14. Rusnák, Marek, 2016. "Nowcasting Czech GDP in real time," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 26-39.
    15. Fabian Krüger & Todd E. Clark & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2017. "Using Entropic Tilting to Combine BVAR Forecasts With External Nowcasts," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 470-485, July.
    16. Knut Are Aastveit & Tuva Marie Fastbø & Eleonora Granziera & Kenneth Sæterhagen Paulsen & Kjersti Næss Torstensen, 2020. "Nowcasting Norwegian household consumption with debit card transaction data," Working Paper 2020/17, Norges Bank.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. Knotek, Edward S. & Zaman, Saeed, 2023. "Real-time density nowcasts of US inflation: A model combination approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1736-1760.
    20. Claudia Foroni & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2013. "A survey of econometric methods for mixed-frequency data," Working Paper 2013/06, Norges Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stacked vector autoregression; Mixed-frequency estimation; Vector autoregression; Bayesian methods; Forecasting; Nowcasting; conditional forecasts;
    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
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    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:fedlwp:2015-030. 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: Anna Oates (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.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.