IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kof/wpskof/19-457.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forecasting Swiss Exports using Bayesian Forecast Reconciliation

Author

Abstract

This paper conducts an extensive forecasting study on 13,118 time series measuring Swiss goods exports, grouped hierarchically by export destination and product category. We apply existing state of the art methods in forecast reconciliation and introduce a novel Bayesian reconciliation framework. This approach allows for explicit estimation of reconciliation biases, leading to several innovations: Prior judgment can be used to assign weights to specific forecasts and the occurrence of negative reconciled forecasts can be ruled out. Overall we find strong evidence that in addition to producing coherent forecasts, reconciliation also leads to improvements in forecast accuracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Eckert & Rob J Hyndman & Anastasios Panagiotelis, 2019. "Forecasting Swiss Exports using Bayesian Forecast Reconciliation," KOF Working papers 19-457, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:19-457
    DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000354388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000354388
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3929/ethz-b-000354388?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. Barthélémy Bonadio & Andreas M Fischer & Philip Sauré, 2020. "The Speed of Exchange Rate Pass-Through," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 506-538.
    2. Gianni Amisano & John Geweke, 2017. "Prediction Using Several Macroeconomic Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(5), pages 912-925, December.
    3. 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).
    4. 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.
    5. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Athanasopoulos, George, 2019. "Cross-temporal coherent forecasts for Australian tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 393-409.
    6. 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.
    7. Kang, Yanfei & Hyndman, Rob J. & Smith-Miles, Kate, 2017. "Visualising forecasting algorithm performance using time series instance spaces," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 345-358.
    8. Jeon, Jooyoung & Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2019. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation with applications to wind power and electric load," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 279(2), pages 364-379.
    9. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 2006. "Forecasting with Many Predictors," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 515-554, Elsevier.
    10. Kapetanios, G. & Mitchell, J. & Price, S. & Fawcett, N., 2015. "Generalised density forecast combinations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 188(1), pages 150-165.
    11. Timmermann, Allan, 2006. "Forecast Combinations," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 135-196, Elsevier.
    12. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B., 2006. "Another look at measures of forecast accuracy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 679-688.
    13. Capistrán, Carlos & Timmermann, Allan, 2009. "Forecast Combination With Entry and Exit of Experts," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 428-440.
    14. Shanika L. Wickramasuriya & George Athanasopoulos & Rob J. Hyndman, 2019. "Optimal Forecast Reconciliation for Hierarchical and Grouped Time Series Through Trace Minimization," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 114(526), pages 804-819, April.
    15. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2017. "Forecasting with temporal hierarchies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(1), pages 60-74.
    16. Bergmeir, Christoph & Hyndman, Rob J. & Benítez, José M., 2016. "Bagging exponential smoothing methods using STL decomposition and Box–Cox transformation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 303-312.
    17. Pennings, Clint L.P. & van Dalen, Jan, 2017. "Integrated hierarchical forecasting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(2), pages 412-418.
    18. Athanasopoulos, George & Ahmed, Roman A. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2009. "Hierarchical forecasts for Australian domestic tourism," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 146-166.
    19. Conflitti, Cristina & De Mol, Christine & Giannone, Domenico, 2015. "Optimal combination of survey forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1096-1103.
    20. 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.
    21. Hyndman, Rob J. & Lee, Alan J. & Wang, Earo, 2016. "Fast computation of reconciled forecasts for hierarchical and grouped time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 16-32.
    22. 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.
    23. Mustonen, Seppo, 1997. "A measure for total variability in multivariate normal distribution," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 321-334, January.
    24. G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of Economic Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    25. Zellner, Arnold & Ando, Tomohiro, 2010. "A direct Monte Carlo approach for Bayesian analysis of the seemingly unrelated regression model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 159(1), pages 33-45, November.
    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. Girolimetto, Daniele & Athanasopoulos, George & Di Fonzo, Tommaso & Hyndman, Rob J., 2024. "Cross-temporal probabilistic forecast reconciliation: Methodological and practical issues," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 1134-1151.
    2. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2024. "Forecast reconciliation: A review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 430-456.
    3. Koop, Gary & McIntyre, Stuart & Mitchell, James & Poon, Aubrey, 2024. "Using stochastic hierarchical aggregation constraints to nowcast regional economic aggregates," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 626-640.
    4. Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Gamakumara, Puwasala & Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J., 2023. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation: Properties, evaluation and score optimisation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 693-706.
    5. Ye, Yuan & Lu, Yonggang & Robinson, Powell & Narayanan, Arunachalam, 2022. "An empirical Bayes approach to incorporating demand intermittency and irregularity into inventory control," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 303(1), pages 255-272.
    6. Møller, Jan Kloppenborg & Nystrup, Peter & Madsen, Henrik, 2024. "Likelihood-based inference in temporal hierarchies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 515-531.
    7. Di Fonzo, Tommaso & Girolimetto, Daniele, 2023. "Cross-temporal forecast reconciliation: Optimal combination method and heuristic alternatives," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 39-57.

    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. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    2. Nystrup, Peter & Lindström, Erik & Møller, Jan K. & Madsen, Henrik, 2021. "Dimensionality reduction in forecasting with temporal hierarchies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1127-1146.
    3. Yang, Dazhi & van der Meer, Dennis, 2021. "Post-processing in solar forecasting: Ten overarching thinking tools," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    4. Hollyman, Ross & Petropoulos, Fotios & Tipping, Michael E., 2021. "Understanding forecast reconciliation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(1), pages 149-160.
    5. 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.
    6. Di Fonzo, Tommaso & Girolimetto, Daniele, 2024. "Forecast combination-based forecast reconciliation: Insights and extensions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 490-514.
    7. Møller, Jan Kloppenborg & Nystrup, Peter & Madsen, Henrik, 2024. "Likelihood-based inference in temporal hierarchies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 515-531.
    8. Li, Li & Kang, Yanfei & Li, Feng, 2023. "Bayesian forecast combination using time-varying features," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1287-1302.
    9. Wang, Xiaoqian & Hyndman, Rob J. & Li, Feng & Kang, Yanfei, 2023. "Forecast combinations: An over 50-year review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1518-1547.
    10. Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Gamakumara, Puwasala & Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J., 2023. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation: Properties, evaluation and score optimisation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 693-706.
    11. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2024. "Forecast reconciliation: A review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 430-456.
    12. Zhang, Bohan & Kang, Yanfei & Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Li, Feng, 2023. "Optimal reconciliation with immutable forecasts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(2), pages 650-660.
    13. Davide Pettenuzzo & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2016. "Optimal Portfolio Choice Under Decision‐Based Model Combinations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(7), pages 1312-1332, November.
    14. Pritularga, Kandrika F. & Svetunkov, Ivan & Kourentzes, Nikolaos, 2021. "Stochastic coherency in forecast reconciliation," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    15. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2017. "Forecasting with temporal hierarchies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(1), pages 60-74.
    16. Bergsteinsson, Hjörleifur G. & Møller, Jan Kloppenborg & Nystrup, Peter & Pálsson, Ólafur Pétur & Guericke, Daniela & Madsen, Henrik, 2021. "Heat load forecasting using adaptive temporal hierarchies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    17. Grimme, Christian & Lehmann, Robert & Noeller, Marvin, 2021. "Forecasting imports with information from abroad," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 109-117.
    18. Bergsteinsson, Hjörleifur G. & Sørensen, Mikkel Lindstrøm & Møller, Jan Kloppenborg & Madsen, Henrik, 2023. "Heat load forecasting using adaptive spatial hierarchies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    19. Olivares, Kin G. & Meetei, O. Nganba & Ma, Ruijun & Reddy, Rohan & Cao, Mengfei & Dicker, Lee, 2024. "Probabilistic hierarchical forecasting with deep Poisson mixtures," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 470-489.
    20. Fotios Petropoulos & Evangelos Spiliotis, 2021. "The Wisdom of the Data: Getting the Most Out of Univariate Time Series Forecasting," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-20, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ierarchical Forecasting; Bayesian Forecast Reconciliation; Swiss Ex-ports; Optimal Forecast Combination;
    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
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - 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:kof:wpskof:19-457. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/koethch.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.