Yoichi Tsuchiya

Directional analysis of consumers’ forecasts of inflation in a small open economy: evidence from South Korea

ABSTRACT We evaluate the directional accuracy of consumers’ forecasts of inflation in predicting the movement of the actual CPI in a small open economy. In order to do so, we use a method developed by Pesaran and Timmermann (2009), based on South Korean data. By illustrating an application of the new market-timing test, we show that consumers’ expectations of inflation are not a useful predictor of the CPI in South Korea. Our findings suggest that the directional accuracy of consumers’ 1-year-ahead forecasts of inflation is not affected by the inflation targeting of the Bank of Korea. Our findings also suggest that consumers’ 1-year-ahead forecasts of inflation are scattered away from the Bank of Korea’s inflation target.

Directional accuracy tests of Chinese renminbi forecasts

This study investigates the directional accuracy of Chinese renminbi exchange rate forecasts by professional forecasters. The forecast with a horizon of one year is useful, whereas the forecasts with forecast horizons of one and three months are not useful in predicting the direction of the exchange rate change. The results for the long-term forecasts suggest that forecasters believe that the government maintains its foreign exchange rate policy of renminbi appreciation. In contrast, short-term forecasts show consistent evidence of exchange rate unpredictability.

Linkages among commodity futures prices in the recent financial crisis: An application of cointegration tests with a structural break

Abstract In this study, we investigate the existence of long-term co-movements among the prices of commodity futures contracts. We use a cointegration test, which accounts for the presence of a structural break. We show that while there is a long-term relationship among agricultural and among non-agricultural commodity futures prices when a structural break is taken into account, there is no such relationship without allowing for a structural break. We also show that these break points, in fact, occur a few months before the recent global financial crisis. Although the previous literature broadly casts doubt on such price co-movements, our results confirm that market performance improved during the sample period.

Asymmetric loss and herding behaviour of exchange rate forecasters: evidence from South Africa

This study examines the asymmetry of the loss function for private forecasters in exchange rate forecasts of the South African rand. It tests rationality under the possibility of an asymmetric loss function. The results indicate less evidence of asymmetry for a horizon of 1 month but considerable evidence of asymmetry for a horizon of 3 months. However, the shapes of the distributions formed by estimated asymmetry parameters of sub-samples for each forecaster are symmetric, regardless of the forecast horizons, which implies that these forecasters do not herd or antiherd. In fact, the results of our empirical herding test show that forecasters neither herd nor antiherd, which is in sharp contrast to recent findings on antiherding for foreign exchange rates in emerging market economies. Our findings provide consistent evidence for a recent suggestion that antiherding might result in the rejection of rationality, even under asymmetric loss functions. Our findings also suggest that central bank transparency might be associated with herding behaviours.

Are consumer sentiments useful in Japan? An application of a new market-timing test

We investigate whether consumer sentiment in Japan is a useful predictor of household consumption, durable goods consumption and the CPI using a recently developed market-timing test. We find that consumer sentiment is not useful for predicting an increase/decrease in household consumption, durable goods consumption, and CPI. The findings suggest that policy-makers may have difficulties obtaining useful qualitative information from consumers. However, using estimated threshold values for the increase/decrease, consumer sentiment became a useful predictor of durable goods consumption and CPI. This suggests that estimating relevant thresholds could enhance the use of directional analysis.

A directional evaluation of corporate executives' exchange rate forecasts

We investigate the directional accuracy of exchange rate forecasts by corporate executives. We find that a forecast with a 1-year horizon is valuable for the profitability and unprofitability predictions of manufacturers, although previous studies provide considerable evidence that forecasts with horizons of 1 year and longer are not valuable. However, a forecast is not valuable in predicting an appreciation or depreciation of the exchange rate. Our findings suggest that corporate executives are more concerned about and focused on the impact of the exchange rate on their profitability, rather than the exchange rate itself.

Evaluating Corporate Executives' Exchange Rate Forecasts Under a Flexible Loss Function

We examine asymmetry in the loss function of corporate executives in their exchange rate forecasts and test for rationality of the forecast under the assumption of a possibly asymmetric loss function. We find evidence that the loss function of the forecast with a 1-year horizon is symmetric and support for rationality. These findings hold for manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors.

Directional Accuracy of Production Managers’ Forecasts

We investigate the directional accuracy of disaggregated production manager forecasts by using a new market-timing test. We present evidence that forecasts for eleven individual industries and the aggregate manufacturing sector are useful predictors of both increases/decreases and acceleration/deceleration in monthly production activity. The results are broadly robust to outliers. We find that directional accuracy is more robust to outlying observations than are traditional error measures, including mean absolute error and root-mean-squared error. This finding may suggest that a directional accuracy measure can complement the traditional error measures to evaluate forecasting performance with different target variables.

Joint evaluation of the directional accuracy of federal budget forecasts

Most research focused on deficit, revenue and outlay in budget forecasts has addressed these issues separately. In this study, we investigate changes in budget forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office, applying a recently developed market-timing test. We find that the combined forecasts of revenue and outlay are useful with a horizon of 8 months in predicting an increase/decrease, and useful with a horizon of up to 20 months in predicting an acceleration/deceleration in the deficit.

Are production managers’ forecasts useful? Joint evaluation and robustness

We jointly evaluate the two directional changes (increase/decrease and acceleration/deceleration) in monthly manufacturing production activity predicted by production managers using a new market-timing test. Besides determining that the forecasts are useful in predicting an increase/decrease and acceleration/deceleration in monthly production activity, joint evaluation of the forecast illustrates the advantage of the new test. Moreover, we find that the results are broadly robust to two data vintages and outlying observations.