Forecasting the Nominal Brent Oil Price with VARs—One Model Fits All?
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Summary:
We carry out an ex post assessment of popular models used to forecast oil prices and propose a host of alternative VAR models based on traditional global macroeconomic and oil market aggregates. While the exact specification of VAR models for nominal oil price prediction is still open to debate, the bias and underprediction in futures and random walk forecasts are larger across all horizons in relation to a large set of VAR specifications. The VAR forecasts generally have the smallest average forecast errors and the highest accuracy, with most specifications outperforming futures and random walk forecasts for horizons up to two years. This calls for caution in reliance on futures or the random walk for forecasting, particularly for near term predictions. Despite the overall strength of VAR models, we highlight some performance instability, with small alterations in specifications, subsamples or lag lengths providing widely different forecasts at times. Combining futures, random walk and VAR models for forecasting have merit for medium term horizons.
Series:
Working Paper No. 2015/251
Subject:
Commodities Econometric analysis Economic forecasting Financial institutions Futures Oil Oil prices Prices Vector autoregression
English
Publication Date:
November 25, 2015
ISBN/ISSN:
9781513524276/1018-5941
Stock No:
WPIEA2015251
Pages:
32
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