Abstract
The paper analyzes the causes of the large errors in the 1988 FRG macroeconomic forecasts. The study is based on a forecast and various simulations with the RWI-business cycle model, a medium-sized macroeconomic short-term model. It is shown that the most important causes were errors in the assumptions of government construction outlays and — more important — of world trade. As to endogenous errors, the forecasts of changes in stocks and the distributed profits proved to be most damaging. By extending the error analyses on such endogenous variates, the paper explores possibilities of model analysis only rarely employed up to now. However, it should be clear that only such an extensive analysis gives a true picture of a model’s strengths and weaknesses.
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I am indebted to David Belsley, Josef Gruber and Kenneth Wallis for helpful comments.
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Heilemann, U. (1991). Evaluating econometric models: The 1988 forecast of the RWI-business cycle model in retrospect. In: Gruber, J. (eds) Econometric Decision Models. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 366. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-51675-7_39
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-51675-7_39
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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