MOOC Econometrics

A good understanding of the macroeconomic cycle with alternating recession and expansion periods (also known as the business cycle) is important for various decision makers. Macroeconomic policy is often based on predictions of this cycle, and such predictions can influence investment decisions of large companies. Central banks and other institutions often publish so-called leading indicators that are helpful to predict the state of the economy. These indicators are based on macroeconomic series like job formation, interest rates, credit, demand, and supply. In this case project you will predict GDP growth by using quarterly data on a hypothetical economy from 1950 quarter 1 to 2015 quarter 4. The data set contains the GDP of the economy and two leading indicators li1 and li2. In order to evaluate the predictive performance of econometric models, you need to split the data in two parts. As estimation sample you take the period from 1951 to 2010 (240 observations), and as evaluation sample you take the period from 2011 to 2015 (20 observations). The first year of data (1950) is used only to create lags of variables. The project consists of two parts. In the first part (a-c) you use logit models to predict whether the economic situation improves or declines, and in the second part (d-g) you use time series models to predict the size of the growth rate of the economy.