This paper provides an introduction to forecast uncertainty in empirical economic modeling. Forecast uncertainty is defined, various measures of forecast uncertainty are examined, and some sources and consequences of forecast uncertainty are analyzed. Empirical illustrations with the U.S. trade...

Both future disturbances and estimated coefficients contribute to the uncertainty in model-based ex ante forecasts, but only the first source is usually taken into account when calculating confidence intervals for practical applications. Schmidt (1974) and Baillie (1979) provide an easily...

This paper demonstrates that forecast accuracy is not necessarily improved when fixed coefficient models are sequentially reestimated, and used for prediction, after updating the database with the latest observation(s). This is at variance with the now popular method (see Meese and Rogoff (1983,...

I test for stock return predictability in the largest and most comprehensive data set analyzed so far, using four common forecasting variables: the dividend- and earnings-price ratios, the short interest rate, and the term spread. The data contain over 20,000 monthly observations from 40...

Tests of rational expectations in foreign exchange markets have been inconclusive because of disagreement over the underlying asset pricing model. This paper uses a newly available set of data on foreign exchange forecasts to examine directly expectations formation in four foreign currency...

This paper evaluates the distributional properties of forecasts from six econometric models of the U.S. trade account. Using stochastic (Monte Carlo) simulation, we derive confidence intervals and forecast-based test statistics which account for uncertainty from future disturbances and from...

This study examines the out-of-sample forecasting performance of models of exchange rate determination without imposing the restriction that coefficients are fixed over time. Both fixed and variable coefficient versions of conventional structural models are considered, with and without a lagged...

Initial estimates of aggregate output and its components are based on very incomplete source data, so they may not fully capture shifts in economic conditions. In particular, if those estimates are based partly on trends in preceding quarters, provisional estimates may overstate activity when...