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Using the yield curve to forecast economic growth
Author(s) -
Yang Parley Ruogu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of forecasting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.543
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1099-131X
pISSN - 0277-6693
DOI - 10.1002/for.2676
Subject(s) - econometrics , yield (engineering) , yield curve , quarter (canadian coin) , economics , interest rate , gross domestic product , product (mathematics) , time series , sample (material) , nowcasting , series (stratigraphy) , computer science , mathematics , machine learning , macroeconomics , history , paleontology , chemistry , materials science , geometry , oceanography , archaeology , chromatography , biology , metallurgy , geology
This paper finds the yield curve to have a well‐performing ability to forecast the real gross domestic product growth in the USA, compared to professional forecasters and time series models. Past studies have different arguments concerning growth lags, structural breaks, and ultimately the ability of the yield curve to forecast economic growth. This paper finds such results to be dependent on the estimation and forecasting techniques employed. By allowing various interest rates to act as explanatory variables and various window sizes for the out‐of‐sample forecasts, significant forecasts from many window sizes can be found. These seemingly good forecasts may face issues, including persistent forecasting errors. However, by using statistical learning algorithms, such issues can be cured to some extent. The overall result suggests, by scientifically deciding the window sizes, interest rate data, and learning algorithms, many outperforming forecasts can be produced for all lags from one quarter to 3 years, although some may be worse than the others due to the irreducible noise of the data.