ECON 4520 - Applied Economic and Financial Forecasting

Forecasts play a crucial role in the formation of economic policy and financial decisions. As a result, accurate predictions of the future are critical for the public and private sector alike. This course introduces students to the empirical techniques used by professional economists in business , government and financial sectors to model the complex processes generating data through time and to make real world forecasts. The steps and methods required to develop a forecast-from understanding the properties of time-series data to forecast evaluation-are defined. Topics include modeling trends, seasonality and cycles, ARMA and ARIMA models, forecast combination, vector-autoregression, and nonlinear methods. All these topics and the relevant techniques will be illustrated using economic and financial data.

Prerequisite: ECON 1200 or INQR 1200; and MATH 1010 or MATH 1500 ; and any of ENGR 2600 , MGMT 2100 , MATP 4600 , or PSYC 2310; or with permission of instructor.

When Offered: OFFERED YEARLY

Co-Listed: ECON 6520

Graded: GRADED

Credit Hours: 4

Contact, Lecture or Lab Hours: 4