IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ice/wpaper/wp39.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Accuracy in forecasting macroeconomic variables in Iceland

Author

Listed:
  • Ásgeir Daníelsson

Abstract

This paper discusses accuracy in forecasting of macroeconomic time series in Iceland. Until recently only the National Economic Institute (NEI) did macroeconomic forecasting in Iceland. Extensive analysis of forecasting can therefore only be done for the forecasts made by this institution during 1974-2002. The paper analysis macroeconomic forecasts published by the Central Bank of Iceland (CBI). It also analysis the accuracy of the first realeases of data from Statistics Iceland as “forecasts” of final (or the most recent) data during recent years. Forecasts made by international institutions like OECD and IMF are not included. The paper finds that errors in forecasting of GDP and private consumption have declined and that the performance of the forecasting for these variables has improved on some measures. But the volatility in the series has also decreased so when the forecast errors are compared to measures of the shocks that hit the economy the forecasting of changes in GDP do not seem to have improved. For some of the main components of GDP like export, imports and investments, the forecast errors have not decreased.

Suggested Citation

  • Ásgeir Daníelsson, 2008. "Accuracy in forecasting macroeconomic variables in Iceland," Economics wp39, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    • Handle: RePEc:ice:wpaper:wp39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sedlabanki.is/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=5978
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S. Boragan Aruoba, 2008. "Data Revisions Are Not Well Behaved," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(2-3), pages 319-340, March.
    2. Sharon Kozicki, 2004. "How do data revisions affect the evaluation and conduct of monetary policy?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 89(Q I), pages 5-38.
    3. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2008. "Explaining The Great Moderation: It Is Not The Shocks," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 621-633, 04-05.
    4. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2003. "Has the Business Cycle Changed and Why?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2002, Volume 17, pages 159-230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Antonello D'Agostino & Karl Whelan, 2008. "Federal Reserve Information During the Great Moderation," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 609-620, 04-05.
    6. Ágeir Daníelsson & Lúdvík Elíasson & Magnús F. Gudmundsson & Björn A. Hauksson & Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir & Thorvardur Tjörvi Ólafsson & Thórarinn G. Pétursson, 2006. "QMM A Quarterly Macroeconomic Model of the Icelandic Economy," Economics wp32, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    7. Clements,Michael & Hendry,David, 1998. "Forecasting Economic Time Series," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521632423.
    8. Graham Elliott & Ivana Komunjer & Allan Timmermann, 2008. "Biases in Macroeconomic Forecasts: Irrationality or Asymmetric Loss?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 122-157, March.
    9. Allan Timmermann, 2006. "An Evaluation of the World Economic Outlook Forecasts," IMF Working Papers 2006/059, International Monetary Fund.
    10. David H. Romer & Christina D. Romer, 2000. "Federal Reserve Information and the Behavior of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 429-457, June.
    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. Capistrán, Carlos, 2008. "Bias in Federal Reserve inflation forecasts: Is the Federal Reserve irrational or just cautious?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1415-1427, November.
    2. Ásgeir Daníelsson, 2008. "The great moderation Icelandic style," Economics wp38, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    3. João Valle e Azevedo, 2011. "Rational vs. professional forecasts," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    4. Marfatia, Hardik A., 2015. "Monetary policy's time-varying impact on the US bond markets: Role of financial stress and risks," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 103-123.
    5. Cesaroni, Tatiana & Maccini, Louis & Malgarini, Marco, 2011. "Business cycle stylized facts and inventory behaviour: New evidence for the Euro area," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 12-24, September.
    6. Chang, Andrew C. & Hanson, Tyler J., 2016. "The accuracy of forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 23-43.
    7. Clements, Michael P., 2012. "Do professional forecasters pay attention to data releases?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 297-308.
    8. Steven J. Davis & James A. Kahn, 2008. "Interpreting the Great Moderation: Changes in the Volatility of Economic Activity at the Macro and Micro Levels," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 155-180, Fall.
    9. Todd E. Clark, 2009. "Is the Great Moderation over? an empirical analysis," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 94(Q IV), pages 5-42.
    10. Filippo di Mauro & L. Vanessa Smith & Stephane Dees & M. Hashem Pesaran, 2007. "Exploring the international linkages of the euro area: a global VAR analysis," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 1-38.
    11. Amendola, Alessandra & Candila, Vincenzo & Gallo, Giampiero M., 2019. "On the asymmetric impact of macro–variables on volatility," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 135-152.
    12. Gamber, Edward N. & Liebner, Jeffrey P. & Smith, Julie K., 2015. "The distribution of inflation forecast errors," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 47-64.
    13. 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.
    14. Karapanagiotidis, Paul, 2012. "Improving Bayesian VAR density forecasts through autoregressive Wishart Stochastic Volatility," MPRA Paper 38885, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. 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.
    16. Hännikäinen Jari, 2017. "Selection of an Estimation Window in the Presence of Data Revisions and Recent Structural Breaks," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, January.
    17. Dean Croushore, 2011. "Frontiers of Real-Time Data Analysis," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 72-100, March.
    18. Krol, Robert, 2013. "Evaluating state revenue forecasting under a flexible loss function," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 282-289.
    19. Dimitris Korobilis, 2013. "Assessing the Transmission of Monetary Policy Using Time-varying Parameter Dynamic Factor Models-super-," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(2), pages 157-179, April.
    20. Clements, Michael P., 2010. "Explanations of the inconsistencies in survey respondents' forecasts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 536-549, May.

    More about this item

    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:ice:wpaper:wp39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Central Bank of Iceland) The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Central Bank of Iceland to update the entry or send us the correct email address. General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedgvis.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.