IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/18870.html

Measuring Uncertainty about Long-Run Prediction

Author

Listed:
  • Ulrich Mueller
  • Mark W. Watson

Abstract

Long-run forecasts of economic variables play an important role in policy, planning, and portfolio decisions. We consider long-horizon forecasts of average growth of a scalar variable, assuming that first differences are second-order stationary. The main contribution is the construction of predictive sets with asymptotic coverage over a wide range of data generating processes, allowing for stochastically trending mean growth, slow mean reversion and other types of long-run dependencies. We illustrate the method by computing predictive sets for 10 to 75 year average growth rates of U.S. real per-capita GDP, consumption, productivity, price level, stock prices and population.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulrich Mueller & Mark W. Watson, 2013. "Measuring Uncertainty about Long-Run Prediction," NBER Working Papers 18870, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18870
    Note: AP EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18870.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kitsul, Yuriy & Wright, Jonathan H., 2013. "The economics of options-implied inflation probability density functions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 696-711.
    2. Lars Peter Hansen & John C. Heaton & Nan Li, 2008. "Consumption Strikes Back? Measuring Long-Run Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 260-302, April.
    3. Nicholas M. Kiefer & Timothy J. Vogelsang & Helle Bunzel, 2000. "Simple Robust Testing of Regression Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(3), pages 695-714, May.
    4. 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.
    5. Doornik Jurgen A & Ooms Marius, 2004. "Inference and Forecasting for ARFIMA Models With an Application to US and UK Inflation," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 1-25, May.
    6. Stock, James H, 1996. "VAR, Error Correction and Pretest Forecasts at Long Horizons," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 58(4), pages 685-701, November.
    7. Granger, Clive W.J. & Jeon, Yongil, 2007. "Long-term forecasting and evaluation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 539-551.
    8. Ľuboš Pástor & Robert F. Stambaugh, 2012. "Are Stocks Really Less Volatile in the Long Run?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 431-478, April.
    9. Ulrich K. Müller & Mark W. Watson, 2008. "Testing Models of Low-Frequency Variability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(5), pages 979-1016, September.
    10. John Y. Campbell & Luis M. Viceira, 1999. "Consumption and Portfolio Decisions when Expected Returns are Time Varying," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 433-495.
    11. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1481-1509 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Kiefer, Nicholas M. & Vogelsang, Timothy J., 2002. "Heteroskedasticity-Autocorrelation Robust Testing Using Bandwidth Equal To Sample Size," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(6), pages 1350-1366, December.
    13. John G. Fernald, 2012. "A quarterly, utilization-adjusted series on total factor productivity," Working Paper Series 2012-19, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    14. Elena Pesavento & Barbara Rossi, 2006. "Small‐sample confidence intervals for multivariate impulse response functions at long horizons," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(8), pages 1135-1155, December.
    15. Kemp, Gordon C.R., 1999. "The Behavior Of Forecast Errors From A Nearly Integrated Ar(1) Model As Both Sample Size And Forecast Horizon Become Large," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 238-256, April.
    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. Gadea Rivas, María Dolores & Gonzalo, Jesús, 2025. "Global and regional long-term climate forecasts: a heterogeneous future," UC3M Working papers. Economics 45946, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    2. Matei Demetrescu & Christoph Hanck & Robinson Kruse‐Becher, 2022. "Robust inference under time‐varying volatility: A real‐time evaluation of professional forecasters," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 1010-1030, August.
    3. C.S. Bos & S.J. Koopman & M. Ooms, 2007. "Long Memory Modelling of Inflation with Stochastic Variance and Structural Breaks," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-099/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. White Halbert & Granger Clive W.J., 2011. "Consideration of Trends in Time Series," Journal of Time Series Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-40, February.
    5. Ulrich K. Müller & Mark W. Watson, 2015. "Low-Frequency Econometrics," NBER Working Papers 21564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Müller, Ulrich K. & Wang, Yulong, 2019. "Nearly weighted risk minimal unbiased estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 209(1), pages 18-34.
    7. Sun, Yixiao X & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Jin, Sainan, 2005. "Optimal Bandwidth Selection in Heteroskedasticity-Autocorrelation Robust Testing∗," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt16b3j2hd, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    8. Leland E. Farmer & Lawrence Schmidt & Allan Timmermann, 2023. "Pockets of Predictability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1279-1341, June.
    9. Xiaofeng Shao, 2010. "Corrigendum: A self‐normalized approach to confidence interval construction in time series," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 72(5), pages 695-696, November.
    10. Francisco Gomes & Alexander Michaelides & Yuxin Zhang, 2022. "Tactical Target Date Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 3047-3070, April.
    11. Hasler, Michael & Khapko, Mariana & Marfè, Roberto, 2019. "Should investors learn about the timing of equity risk?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(3), pages 182-204.
    12. Massimiliano Marcellino, 2008. "A linear benchmark for forecasting GDP growth and inflation?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 305-340.
    13. Campani, Carlos Heitor & Garcia, René, 2019. "Approximate analytical solutions for consumption/investment problems under recursive utility and finite horizon," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 364-384.
    14. Pötscher, Benedikt M. & Preinerstorfer, David, 2017. "Further Results on Size and Power of Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation Robust Tests, with an Application to Trend Testing," MPRA Paper 81053, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Kim, Min Seong & Sun, Yixiao & Yang, Jingjing, 2017. "A fixed-bandwidth view of the pre-asymptotic inference for kernel smoothing with time series data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 197(2), pages 298-322.
    16. 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.
    17. Hui Chen & Nengjiu Ju & Jianjun Miao, 2014. "Dynamic Asset Allocation with Ambiguous Return Predictability," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(4), pages 799-823, October.
    18. Hong, Yongmiao & Linton, Oliver & McCabe, Brendan & Sun, Jiajing & Wang, Shouyang, 2024. "Kolmogorov–Smirnov type testing for structural breaks: A new adjusted-range based self-normalization approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 238(2).
    19. Kim, Seonjin & Zhao, Zhibiao & Shao, Xiaofeng, 2015. "Nonparametric functional central limit theorem for time series regression with application to self-normalized confidence interval," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 277-290.
    20. John H. Cochrane, 2014. "A Mean-Variance Benchmark for Intertemporal Portfolio Theory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(1), pages 1-49, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • 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:nbr:nberwo:18870. 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/nberrus.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.