IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/siu/wpaper/05-2009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Analyzing and Forecasting Business Cycles in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Factor Model for Singapore

Author

Listed:
  • Hwee Kwan Chow

    (School of Economics, Singapore Management University)

  • Keen Meng Choy

    (Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University)

Abstract

A dynamic factor model is applied to a large panel dataset of Singapore’s macroeconomic variables and global economic indicators with the initial objective of analyzing business cycles in a small open economy. The empirical results suggest that four common factors are present in the quarterly time series, which can broadly be interpreted as world, regional, electronics and domestic economic cycles. The estimated factor model explains well the observed fluctuations in real economic activity and price inflation, leading us to use it in forecasting Singapore’s business cycles. We find that the forecasts generated by the factors are generally more accurate than the predictions of univariate models and vector autoregressions that employ leading indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Hwee Kwan Chow & Keen Meng Choy, 2009. "Analyzing and Forecasting Business Cycles in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Factor Model for Singapore," Working Papers 05-2009, Singapore Management University, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:siu:wpaper:05-2009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mercury.smu.edu.sg/rsrchpubupload/14364/dynamicfactor.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Forni, Mario & Hallin, Marc & Lippi, Marco & Reichlin, Lucrezia, 2003. "Do financial variables help forecasting inflation and real activity in the euro area?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1243-1255, September.
    2. Danny Quah & Thomas J. Sargent, 1993. "A Dynamic Index Model for Large Cross Sections," NBER Chapters, in: Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting, pages 285-310, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kim, Kunhong & Buckle, R A & Hall, V B, 1994. "Key Features of New Zealand Business Cycles," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 70(208), pages 56-73, March.
    4. Ben S. Bernanke & Jean Boivin & Piotr Eliasz, 2005. "Measuring the Effects of Monetary Policy: A Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(1), pages 387-422.
    5. Kunhong Kim & A. Buckle & V. B. Hall, 1994. "Key Features of New Zealand Business Cycles," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 70(208), pages 56-72, March.
    6. Mario Forni & Marc Hallin & Marco Lippi & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2000. "The Generalized Dynamic-Factor Model: Identification And Estimation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 540-554, November.
    7. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1989. "New Indexes of Coincident and Leading Economic Indicators," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 351-409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Danthine, Jean-Pierre & Girardin, Michel, 1989. "Business cycles in Switzerland : A comparative study," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 31-50, January.
    9. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2002. "Determining the Number of Factors in Approximate Factor Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, January.
    10. 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.
    11. Michael Artis & Anindya Banerjee & Massimiliano Marcellino, "undated". "Factor forecasts for the UK," Working Papers 203, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    12. Jean Boivin & Serena Ng, 2005. "Understanding and Comparing Factor-Based Forecasts," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(3), December.
    13. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1993. "Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number stoc93-1, March.
    14. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 2002. "Macroeconomic Forecasting Using Diffusion Indexes," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 147-162, April.
    15. Chow, Hwee Kwan & Choy, Keen Meng, 2006. "Forecasting the global electronics cycle with leading indicators: A Bayesian VAR approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 301-315.
    16. Garcia-Ferrer, Antonio & Poncela, Pilar, 2002. "Forecasting European GNP Data through Common Factor Models and Other Procedures," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 225-244, July.
    17. Norrbin, Stefan C & Schlagenhauf, Don E, 1991. "The Importance of Sectoral and Aggregate Shocks in Business Cycles," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 29(2), pages 317-335, April.
    18. Englund, Peter & Persson, Torsten & Svensson, Lars E. O., 1992. "Swedish business cycles: 1861-1988," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 343-371, December.
    19. Bai, Jushan & Ng, Serena, 2007. "Determining the Number of Primitive Shocks in Factor Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 52-60, January.
    20. M. Ayhan Kose & Christopher Otrok & Charles H. Whiteman, 2003. "International Business Cycles: World, Region, and Country-Specific Factors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1216-1239, September.
    21. Christian Schumacher, 2007. "Forecasting German GDP using alternative factor models based on large datasets," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 271-302.
    22. Kunhong Kim & Yong-Yil Choi, 1997. "Business cycles in Korea: Is there any stylized feature?," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 24(5), pages 275-293, October.
    23. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1, March.
    24. Guglielmo Maria Caporale, 1997. "Sectoral shocks and business cycles: a disaggregated analysis of output fluctuations in the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(11), pages 1477-1482.
    25. Long, John B, Jr & Plosser, Charles I, 1983. "Real Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(1), pages 39-69, February.
    26. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W. (ed.), 1993. "Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226774886, December.
    27. 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.
    28. Stock J.H. & Watson M.W., 2002. "Forecasting Using Principal Components From a Large Number of Predictors," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 97, pages 1167-1179, December.
    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. Hwee Kwan Chow & Keen Meng Choy, 2009. "Monetary Policy And Asset Prices In A Small Open Economy: A Factor-Augmented Var Analysis For Singapore," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(01), pages 1-23.
    2. Mariano, Roberto S. & Ozmucur, Suleyman, 2015. "High-Mixed-Frequency Dynamic Latent Factor Forecasting Models for GDP in the Philippines/Modelos de factores dinámicos latentes con datos mixtos de alta frecuencia aplicados a la predicción del PIB en," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 33, pages 451-462, Mayo.
    3. Mendoza, Liu & Morales, Daniel, 2013. "Construyendo un índice coincidente de recesión: Una aplicación para la economía peruana," Revista Estudios Económicos, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, issue 26, pages 81-100.
    4. Mendoza, Liu & Morales, Daniel, 2012. "Constructing a real-time coincident recession index: an application to the Peruvian economy," Working Papers 2012-020, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.
    5. Mapa, Dennis S. & Simbulan, Maria Christina, 2014. "Analyzing and Forecasting Movements of the Philippine Economy using the Dynamic Factor Models (DFM)," MPRA Paper 54478, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Hwee Kwan Chow & Yijie Fei & Daniel Han, 2023. "Forecasting GDP with many predictors in a small open economy: forecast or information pooling?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 805-829, August.
    7. Kong Yam Tan & Tilak Abeysinghe & Khee Giap Tan, 2015. "Shifting Drivers of Growth: Policy Implications for ASEAN-5," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 14(1), pages 157-173, Winter/Sp.

    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. Hwee Kwan Chow & Keen Meng Choy, 2008. "Forecasting Business Cycles in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Factor Model for Singapore," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 0802, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    2. Karim Barhoumi & Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2010. "Are disaggregate data useful for factor analysis in forecasting French GDP?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1-2), pages 132-144.
    3. Stock, J.H. & Watson, M.W., 2016. "Dynamic Factor Models, Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressions, and Structural Vector Autoregressions in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 415-525, Elsevier.
    4. Rua, António, 2017. "A wavelet-based multivariate multiscale approach for forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 581-590.
    5. Sandra Eickmeier & Christina Ziegler, 2008. "How successful are dynamic factor models at forecasting output and inflation? A meta-analytic approach," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 237-265.
    6. Poncela, Pilar & Ruiz, Esther & Miranda, Karen, 2021. "Factor extraction using Kalman filter and smoothing: This is not just another survey," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1399-1425.
    7. Gupta, Rangan & Kabundi, Alain, 2011. "A large factor model for forecasting macroeconomic variables in South Africa," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1076-1088, October.
    8. Hanan Naser, 2015. "Estimating and forecasting Bahrain quarterly GDP growth using simple regression and factor-based methods," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 449-479, September.
    9. Karim Barhoumi & Olivier Darné & Laurent Ferrara, 2014. "Dynamic factor models: A review of the literature," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2013(2), pages 73-107.
    10. Catherine Doz & Peter Fuleky, 2019. "Dynamic Factor Models," PSE Working Papers halshs-02262202, HAL.
    11. Kihwan Kim & Norman Swanson, 2013. "Diffusion Index Model Specification and Estimation Using Mixed Frequency Datasets," Departmental Working Papers 201315, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    12. Sonia de Lucas Santos & M. Jesús Delgado Rodríguez & Inmaculada Álvarez Ayuso & José Luis Cendejas Bueno, 2011. "Los ciclos económicos internacionales: antecedentes y revisión de la literatura," Cuadernos de Economía - Spanish Journal of Economics and Finance, Asociación Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 34(95), pages 73-84, Agosto.
    13. Catherine Doz & Peter Fuleky, 2019. "Dynamic Factor Models," Working Papers 2019-4, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    14. Catherine Doz & Peter Fuleky, 2019. "Dynamic Factor Models," Working Papers halshs-02262202, HAL.
    15. Luciani, Matteo, 2014. "Forecasting with approximate dynamic factor models: The role of non-pervasive shocks," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 20-29.
    16. Arvid Raknerud & Terje Skjerpen & Anders Rygh Swensen, 2010. "Forecasting key macroeconomic variables from a large number of predictors: a state space approach," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(4), pages 367-387.
    17. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Kapetanios, George, 2006. "Impulse Response Functions from Structural Dynamic Factor Models: A Monte Carlo Evaluation," CEPR Discussion Papers 5621, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Antipa, Pamfili & Barhoumi, Karim & Brunhes-Lesage, Véronique & Darné, Olivier, 2012. "Nowcasting German GDP: A comparison of bridge and factor models," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 864-878.
    19. Serati, Massimiliano & Manera, Matteo & Plotegher, Michele, 2008. "Modeling Electricity Prices: From the State of the Art to a Draft of a New Proposal," International Energy Markets Working Papers 44426, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    20. Daniel Grenouilleau, 2006. "The Stacked Leading Indicators Dynamic Factor Model: A Sensitivity Analysis of Forecast Accuracy using Bootstrapping," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 249, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business cycle; Dynamic factor model; Forecasting; Singapore;
    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
    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:siu:wpaper:05-2009. 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: QL THor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sesmusg.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.