Book Description:
Economic forecasting is the process of making predictions about the economy as a whole or in part. Such forecasts may be made in great detail or may be very general. In any case, they describe the expected future behaviour of all or part of the economy and help form the basis of planning. Economic forecasting is of immense importance as any economic system is a stochastic entity of great complexity and vital to the national development in the information age. Forecasts are required for two basic reasons: the future is uncertain, and the full impact of many decisions taken now might deviate later. Consequently, accurate predictions of the future would improve the efficiency of the decision-making process. In particular, the knowledge of future demand for products and services is imperative to all industries since it is a prerequisite for any viable corporate strategy. This new and important book gathers the latest research from around the globe in this field and related topics such as: the econometric modeling and forecasting of private housing demand, the nonparametric time-detrended Fisher effect, and others.

Table of Contents:
Preface

Chapter 1. Temporal Disaggregation of Time Series: A Review, pp.1-28
(Jose M. Pavía, Department of Applied Economics,University of Valencia, Spain)

Chapter 2. Econometric Modeling and Forecasting of Private Housing Demand, pp.29-54
(James M.W. Wong and S. Thomas Ng, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

Chapter 3. Signal and Noise Decomposition of Nonstationary Time Series, pp.55-106
(Terence C. Mills, Department Of Economics, Loughborough University, UK)

Chapter 4. A Cost of Capital Analysis of the Gains from Securitization, pp.107-134
(Hugh Thomas and Zhiqiang Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China and others)

Chapter 5. The Nonparametric Time-Detrended Fisher Effect, pp.135-162
(Heather L. R. Tierney, Department of Economics and Finance, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC)

Chapter 6. Forecasting Ability and Strategic Behavior of Japanese Institutional Forecasters, pp.163-180
(Masahiro Ashiya, Faculty of Economics, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan)

Chapter 7. Qualitative Survey Data on Expectations: Is There an Alternative to the Balance Statistic?, pp.181-190
(Oscar Claveria, Research Institute of Applied Economics (IREA), University of Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain))

Chapter 8. Analyst Origin and their Forecasting Quality on the Latin American Stock Markets, pp.191-212
(Jean-Francois Bacmann, Huobstrasse, Pfaffikon SZ, Guido Bolliger, Rue Balzac, Paris)*

Chapter 9. Modeling and Forecasting Income Tax Revenue:The Case of Uzbekistan, pp.213-228
(Marat Ibragimov,Nishanbay Sirajiddinov,Center for Economic; Research,Tashkent,Uzbekistan,Rustam Ibragimov, Harvard Univ.,Cambridge)*

Chapter 10. Forecasting the Unconditional and Conditional Kurtosis of the Asset Returns Distribution, pp.229-248
(Trino Manuel Niguez, Javier Perote, Antonio Rubia, Department of Economics and Quantitative Methods, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, London, UK and others)

Chapter 11. Transportýng Turkýsh Exam Takers: A New Use for an Old Model ^, pp.249-262
(Nurhan Davutyan and Mert C. Demir, Department of Industrial Engineering, Marmara University-Goztepe Campus 34722, Istanbul, Turkey)

Index pp.263-273