A comparison of the forecast performance of Markov-switching and threshold autoregressive models of US GNP

Clements, M. P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6329-1341 and Krolzig, H.-M. (1998) A comparison of the forecast performance of Markov-switching and threshold autoregressive models of US GNP. Econometrics Journal, 1 (1). pp. 47-75. ISSN 1368-423X doi: 10.1111/1368-423X.11004

Abstract/Summary

While there has been a great deal of interest in the modelling of non-linearities in economic time series, there is no clear consensus regarding the forecasting abilities of non-linear time-series models. We evaluate the performance of two leading non-linear models in forecasting post-war US GNP, the self-exciting threshold autoregressive model and the Markov-switching autoregressive model. Two methods of analysis are employed: an empirical forecast accuracy comparison of the two models, and a Monte Carlo study. The latter allows us to control for factors that may otherwise undermine the performance of the non-linear models.