A Comparison of Forecasting Accuracies of Alternative Regional Production Index Methodologies
比较了美联储银行估算区域制造业实际增加值所用方法的预测准确性，发现基于产品耗尽假设的简单方法优于贝叶斯估计的柯布-道格拉斯生产函数方法，后者因数据量小和共线性问题表现不佳。
This article examines the forecasting accuracies of various methods used by Federal Reserve Banks to estimate real value added by regional manufacturing industries. Using Texas manufacturing data and weighted forecasting accuracy measures consistent with index number construction for Texas, obtained results support the use of very simple methods based on the assumption of product exhaustion, allowing for technical change. More complex methods using Cobb-Douglas production functions estimated by Bayesian techniques did not perform as well, not because of lack of conceptual sophistication or appropriate prior information but probably because of the small number of observations and collinearity of the data that are available when constructing regional production indices. These results must be qualified. The weighted forecasting accuracy measures tend to obscure the fact that no one method is uniformly superior to the other methods for all industries. Given industry weights different from those for Texas, the...