Experiments with Fuzzy Methods for Forecasting Time Series as Alternatives to Classical Methods

Even though forecasting methods have advanced in the last few decades, economists still face a simple question: which prediction method gives the most accurate results? Econometric forecasting methods can deal with different types of time series and have good results, but in specific cases, they may...

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Published inMathematics (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 19; p. 2517
Main Authors Oancea, Bogdan, Pospíšil, Richard, Jula, Marius Nicolae, Imbrișcă, Cosmin-Ionuț
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2021
Subjects
Accuracy
Central banks
Data processing
Econometrics
Economic forecasting
Economic forecasts
Economic indicators
Economic theory
Economists
Enrollments
Expenditures
Experiments
Fuzzy sets
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Mathematics
Methods
Monetary policy
Soft computing
Tax allocation
Time series
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Summary:Even though forecasting methods have advanced in the last few decades, economists still face a simple question: which prediction method gives the most accurate results? Econometric forecasting methods can deal with different types of time series and have good results, but in specific cases, they may fail to provide accurate predictions. Recently, new techniques borrowed from the soft computing area were adopted for economic forecasting. Starting from the importance of economic forecasts, we present an experimental study where we compared the accuracy of some of the most used econometric forecasting methods, namely the simple exponential smoothing, Holt and ARIMA methods, with that of two new methods based on the concept of fuzzy time series. We used a set of time series extracted from the Eurostat database and the R software for all data processing. The results of the experiments show that despite not being fully superior to the econometric techniques, the fuzzy time series forecasting methods could be considered as an alternative for specific time series.
ISSN:2227-7390
2227-7390
DOI:10.3390/math9192517