Economic and Business Forecasting: Analyzing and Interpreting Econometric Results [Hardcover]

Equipping analysts, practitioners, and graduate students with a statistical framework to make effective decisions based on the application of simple economic and statistical methods, Economic and Business Forecasting offers a comprehensive and practical approach to quantifying and accurate forecasting of key variables. Using simple econometric techniques, author John E. Silvia focuses on a select set of major economic and financial variables, revealing how to optimally use statistical software as a template to apply to your own variables of interest.

• Presents the economic and financial variables that offer unique insights into economic performance
• Highlights the econometric techniques that can be used to characterize variables
• Explores the application of SAS software, complete with simple explanations of SAS-code and output
• Identifies key econometric issues with practical solutions to those problems

Presenting the ten commandments for economic and business forecasting, this book provides you with a practical forecasting framework you can use for important everyday business applications.

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Chapter 1 Creating Harmony Out of Noisy Data 1

Effective Decision Making: Characterize the Data 2

Chapter 2 First, Understand the Data 27

Growth: How Is the Economy Doing Overall? 30

Personal Consumption 31

Gross Private Domestic Investment 33

Government Purchases 35

Net Exports of Goods and Services 36

Real Final Sales and Gross Domestic Purchases 37&ll2