Forecasting in a Data-Rich Enviornment

With the introduction of new macroeconomic and financial indicators and the timely publication of high frequency data, forecasters face an ever-increasing amount of information when making their predictions. It is thus a great challenge to set up parsimonious time series models that can synthesize the rich information set at hand, as well as make accurate forecasts. I hope in my dissertation to contribute to the forecasting literature by applying newly-developed tools and methods to the empirical forecasting of macroeconomic and business indicators. Chapter 1 examines the information contained in financial market signals can be informative regarding the state of the macro economy. In this chapter, we utilize principal component analysis and forecast combination techniques to summarize the information from a large panel of 991 financial market series. We examine the consensus GDP and CPI projections in two surveys of professional macro forecasts for their efficiency regarding the aforementioned signals. Our results show that their forecast errors correlate significantly with many financial series as well as factors extracted from these series. Using a panel of financial market data, we were able to predict professional forecasters' errors out-of-sample, indicating the potential to improve their forecasts with a rich set of financial signals. In addition, both the in-sample correlation and the out-of-sample forecast improvement were shown to strengthen during the most recent financial crisis. In Chapter 2, we aim at designing statistical models to predict corporate earnings which either perform as well as, or even better than analysts. There are at least two challenges: (1) analysts use real-time data whereas statistical models often rely on stale data and (2) analysts use potentially large set of observations whereas models often are frugal with data series. In this chapter we introduce newly-developed mixed frequency regression methods that are able to synthesize rich real-time data and predict earnings out-of-sample. Our forecasts are shown to be systematically more accurate than analysts' consensus forecasts, reducing their forecast errors by 15% to 30% on average, depending on forecast horizon. In Chapter 3, we propose imposing structure on the coefficients of an autogressive (AR) model to reduce the number of parameters estimated, and show that with a finite sample, such hyper-parameterization can lead to a more parsimonious model and can thus improve the AR model's forecast performance. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to assess under which conditions the models we propose outperform the benchmark AR model. In an empirical application of forecasting 170 monthly macroeconomic series, we found that hyper-parameterized AR models have clear advantage over the AR model, for series where the population best linear projections are long.Doctor of Philosoph

The impact of macroeconomic leading indicators on inventory management

Forecasting tactical sales is important for long term decisions such as procurement and informing lower level inventory management decisions. Macroeconomic indicators have been shown to improve the forecast accuracy at tactical level, as these indicators can provide early warnings of changing markets while at the same time tactical sales are sufficiently aggregated to facilitate the identification of useful leading indicators. Past research has shown that we can achieve significant gains by incorporating such information. However, at lower levels, that inventory decisions are taken, this is often not feasible due to the level of noise in the data. To take advantage of macroeconomic leading indicators at this level we need to translate the tactical forecasts into operational level ones. In this research we investigate how to best assimilate top level forecasts that incorporate such exogenous information with bottom level (at Stock Keeping Unit level) extrapolative forecasts. The aim is to demonstrate whether incorporating these variables has a positive impact on bottom level planning and eventually inventory levels. We construct appropriate hierarchies of sales and use that structure to reconcile the forecasts, and in turn the different available information, across levels. We are interested both at the point forecast and the prediction intervals, as the latter inform safety stock decisions. Therefore the contribution of this research is twofold. We investigate the usefulness of macroeconomic leading indicators for SKU level forecasts and alternative ways to estimate the variance of hierarchically reconciled forecasts. We provide evidence using a real case study

Three Essays on Modelling of Electricity Markets

2010/2011The aim of this dissertation is to provide more realistic models for valuation and risk management of energy contracts and optimization of power plants.XXIII Ciclo198

Volatility forecasting

Volatility has been one of the most active and successful areas of research in time series econometrics and economic forecasting in recent decades. This chapter provides a selective survey of the most important theoretical developments and empirical insights to emerge from this burgeoning literature, with a distinct focus on forecasting applications. Volatility is inherently latent, and Section 1 begins with a brief intuitive account of various key volatility concepts. Section 2 then discusses a series of different economic situations in which volatility plays a crucial role, ranging from the use of volatility forecasts in portfolio allocation to density forecasting in risk management. Sections 3, 4 and 5 present a variety of alternative procedures for univariate volatility modeling and forecasting based on the GARCH, stochastic volatility and realized volatility paradigms, respectively. Section 6 extends the discussion to the multivariate problem of forecasting conditional covariances and correlations, and Section 7 discusses volatility forecast evaluation methods in both univariate and multivariate cases. Section 8 concludes briefly. JEL Klassifikation: C10, C53, G1

Essays on the empirical analysis of energy risk

Energy markets have become increasingly sophisticated, requiring modelling techniques of analogous calibre. This thesis deals with models of changing regime for the petroleum complex. Modelling the conditional distribution of energy prices as a regime switching process is motivated by the market-specific characteristics of oil: different market conditions, such as backwardation and contango, involve different dynamics. The first empirical part examines the very short-end of the futures curve volatility. To address in a realistic way the potential diverse response of oil volatility to fundamentals across high and low volatility regimes, augmented regime volatility models are employed. Results indicate that volatility can be decomposed to a highly persistent conditional volatility process and a relatively short-lived non-stationary process. Apart from evaluating the size of price risk, risk managers must also design a framework for mitigating their exposures. This is the focus of the second empirical part which estimates dynamic hedge ratios. Linking the concept of disequilibrium with that of uncertainty across high and low volatility regimes, a state-dependent error correction model with timevarying second moments is introduced. Finally, the third empirical part, examines the information content of the dependence structure between correlated petroleum futures curves. Term structure is decomposed into level, slope and curvature shocks. Introducing a multiregime framework, these factors are utilised to study inter-commodity and inter-market spreads. Results suggest markedly different state-dependent speeds of mean reversion and volatility/correlation dynamics across regimes. Overall, the employed models provide superior forecasting performance and indicate that state-dependent dynamics may provide significant benefits to market participants. The findings of this thesis have important implications for energy market trading and risk management, as well as energy market operations, such as refining and budget planning, by providing valuable information on the oil price volatility dynamics and the ability to predict risk

Untangling hotel industry’s inefficiency: An SFA approach applied to a renowned Portuguese hotel chain

The present paper explores the technical efficiency of four hotels from Teixeira Duarte Group - a renowned Portuguese hotel chain. An efficiency ranking is established from these four hotel units located in Portugal using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. This methodology allows to discriminate between measurement error and systematic inefficiencies in the estimation process enabling to investigate the main inefficiency causes. Several suggestions concerning efficiency improvement are undertaken for each hotel studied.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Volatility Forecasting

Volatility has been one of the most active and successful areas of research in time series econometrics and economic forecasting in recent decades. This chapter provides a selective survey of the most important theoretical developments and empirical insights to emerge from this burgeoning literature, with a distinct focus on forecasting applications. Volatility is inherently latent, and Section 1 begins with a brief intuitive account of various key volatility concepts. Section 2 then discusses a series of different economic situations in which volatility plays a crucial role, ranging from the use of volatility forecasts in portfolio allocation to density forecasting in risk management. Sections 3,4 and 5 present a variety of alternative procedures for univariate volatility modeling and forecasting based on the GARCH, stochastic volatility and realized volatility paradigms, respectively. Section 6 extends the discussion to the multivariate problem of forecasting conditional covariances and correlations, and Section 7 discusses volatility forecast evaluation methods in both univariate and multivariate cases. Section 8 concludes briefly.

Volatility Forecasting

Volatility has been one of the most active and successful areas of research in time series econometrics and economic forecasting in recent decades. This chapter provides a selective survey of the most important theoretical developments and empirical insights to emerge from this burgeoning literature, with a distinct focus on forecasting applications. Volatility is inherently latent, and Section 1 begins with a brief intuitive account of various key volatility concepts. Section 2 then discusses a series of different economic situations in which volatility plays a crucial role, ranging from the use of volatility forecasts in portfolio allocation to density forecasting in risk management. Sections 3, 4 and 5 present a variety of alternative procedures for univariate volatility modeling and forecasting based on the GARCH, stochastic volatility and realized volatility paradigms, respectively. Section 6 extends the discussion to the multivariate problem of forecasting conditional covariances and correlations, and Section 7 discusses volatility forecast evaluation methods in both univariate and multivariate cases. Section 8 concludes briefly.