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Working Paper
Lessons for forecasting unemployment in the United States: use flow rates, mind the trend
This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that incorporate unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches?the more reduced-form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the more structural method in Tasci (2012)?to generalize whether data on unemployment flows are useful in forecasting the unemployment rate. We find that any approach that considers unemployment inflow and outflow rates performs well in the near term. Over longer forecast horizons, Tasci (2012) appears to be a ...
Working Paper
Lessons for Forecasting Unemployment in the U.S.: Use Flow Rates, Mind the Trend
This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that leverage unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches?the more reduced form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the more structural method in Tasci (2012)?to generalize whether data on unemployment flows is useful in forecasting the unemployment rate. We find that any approach that leverages unemployment inflow and outflow rates performs well in the near term. Over longer forecast horizons, Tasci (2012) appears to be a ...