On December 23, 2003, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced that the United States Department of Agriculture had diagnosed the first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as “mad cow disease.†This study uses supermarket sales data to analyze the...

An approach to exponential smoothing that relies on a linear single source of error state space model is outlined. A maximum likelihood method for the estimation of associated smoothing parameters is developed. Commonly used restrictions on the smoothing parameters are rationalised. Issues...

We discuss the scientific contribution of Battaglia and Protopapas’ paper concerning the debate on global warming supported by an extensive analysis of temperature time series in the Alpine region. In the work, Authors use several exploratory and modelling tools for assessing and...

We model aggregate delinquency behaviour for consumer credit (including credit card loans and other consumer loans) and for residential real estate loans using data up until 2008. We test for cointegrating relationships and then estimate short run error correction models. We find evidence to...

Over the past two centuries, the life expectancy has more than doubled in many countries, for both males and females. The levels of the countries with the highest life expectancies have risen almost linearly. We exploit this regularity by using the classic univariate ARIMA model to forecast...

In the exponential smoothing approach to forecasting, restrictions are often imposed on the smoothing parameters which ensure that certain components are exponentially weighted averages. In this paper, a new general restriction is derived on the basis that the one-step ahead prediction error can...