....................................................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 8 Weather Forecasts ....................................................................................................

This study investigates the performance of combination forecasts in the context of international tourism demand. Five econometric and two time-series models are employed to generate individual forecasts. Six combination methods are then employed, and their forecasting performance evaluated, using data on UK outbound tourism demand in seven destination countries. The results suggest that combina...

Weather forecasts are produced to help people make decisions in weather sensitive situations, so an important aspect of forecast quality is the economic value of the forecasts to decision-makers in real applications. Assessing the economic value of weather forecasts in real-life operations can, however, be complex. The forecasts are usually only one of a number of factors influencing decisions,...

Macroeconomic forecasts are frequently produced, published, discussed and used. The formal evaluation of such forecasts has a long research history. Recently, a new angle to the evaluation of forecasts has been addressed, and in this review we analyse some recent developments from that perspective. The literature on forecast evaluation predominantly assumes that macroeconomic forecasts are gene...

Policy makers and businessmen demand real-time information and short-term forecasts about bed-nights occupied and the occupancy rate in hotel establishments (the latter being the percentage ratio of the number of bed nights occupied to the number of bed-nights on offer in the same period, usually one month). So, when these forecasts are obtained using single equations time series models, implic...

Generally, we value forecasts for their accuracy. In some cases, however, the forecasts themselves are interesting because of what they reveal about the forecaster. Monetary policymaker forecasts are important because they partially reveal what policymakers believe will follow from their decisions. Forecasts of inflation and real output (whether made by Federal Reserve officials or private sect...

We combine the probability forecasts of a real GDP decline from the U.S. Survey of Professional Forecasters, after trimming the forecasts that do not have "value", as measured by the Kuiper Skill Score and in the sense of Merton (1981). For this purpose, we use a simple test to evaluate the probability forecasts. The proposed test does not require the probabilities to be converted to binary for...

The accuracy of 1,514 strategic intelligence forecasts abstracted from intelligence reports was assessed. The results show that both discrimination and calibration of forecasts was very good. Discrimination was better for senior (versus junior) analysts and for easier (versus harder) forecasts. Miscalibration was mainly due to underconfidence such that analysts assigned more uncertainty than ne...

Forecasting volatility has received a great deal of research attention. Many articles have considered the relative performance of econometric model based and option implied volatility forecasts. While many studies have found that implied volatility is the preferred approach, a number of issues remain unresolved. One issue being the relative merit of combination forecasts. By utilising recent ec...

‘‘Iterated’’ multiperiod-ahead time series forecasts are made using a one-period ahead model, iterated forward for the desired number of periods, whereas ‘‘direct’’ forecasts are made using a horizon-specific estimated model, where the dependent variable is the multiperiod ahead value being forecasted. Which approach is better is an empirical matter: in theory, iterated forecasts are more effic...