AN EVALUATION OF USA UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FORECASTS IN TERMS OF ACCURACY AND BIAS. EMPIRICAL METHODS TO IMPROVE THE FORECASTS ACCURACY

Bratu Mihaela
Additional contact information
Bratu Mihaela: Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Mihaela Simionescu

Annals - Economy Series, 2013, vol. 1, 170-180

Abstract: The most accurate forecasts for USA unemployment rate on the horizon 2001-2012, according to U1 Theil’s coefficient and to multi-criteria ranking methods, were provided by International Monetary Fund (IMF), being followed by other institutions as: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Blue Chips (BC). The multi-criteria ranking methods were applied to solve the divergence in assessing the accuracy, differences observed by computing five chosen measures of accuracy: U1 and U2 statistics of Theil, mean error, mean squared error, root mean squared error. Some strategies of improving the accuracy of the predictions provided by the four institutions, which are biased in all cases, excepting BC, were proposed. However, these methods did not generate unbiased forecasts. The predictions made by IMF and OECD for 2001-2012 can be improved by constructing combined forecasts, the INV approach and the scheme proposed by author providing the most accurate expections. The BC forecasts can be improved by smoothing the predictions using Holt-Winters method and Hodrick- Prescott filter.

Keywords: forecasts; predictions; forecasts accuracy; combined forecasts; multi-criteria ranking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.utgjiu.ro/revista/ec/pdf/2013-01/24_Bratu%20Mihaela.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cbu:jrnlec:y:2013:v:1:p:170-180

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annals - Economy Series from Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ecobici Nicolae ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).