Prediction and forecasting in linear models with measurement error

We consider measurement error models within the time series unobserved component framework. A variable of interest is observed with some measurement error and modelled as an unobserved component. The forecast and the prediction of this variable given the observed values is given by the Kalman filter and smoother along with their conditional variances. By expressing the forecasts and predictions as weighted averages of the observed values, we investigate the effect of estimation error in the measurement and observation noise variances. We also develop corrected standard errors for prediction and forecasting accounting for the fact that the measurement and observation error variances are estimated by the same sample that is used for forecasting and prediction purposes. We apply the theory to the Yellowstone grizzly bears and US index of production datasets.     

Human Development Over Time: An Empirical Comparison of a Dynamic Index and the Standard HDI

Social Indicators Research - This research uses panel data to explore inferences about human development associated with two different formulations of the Human Development Index (HDI). The first...     

Dynamic factor analysis for short panels: estimating performance trajectories for water utilities

We develop a novel estimation algorithm for a dynamic factor model (DFM) applied to panel data with a short time dimension and a large cross sectional dimension. Current DFMs usually require panels with a minimum of 20 years of quarterly data (80 time observations per panel). In contrast, the application we consider includes panels with a median of 8 annual observations. As a result, the time dimension in our paper is substantially shorter than previous work in the DFM literature. This difference increases the computational challenges of the estimation process which we address by developing the “Two-Cycle Conditional Expectation - Maximization” (2CCEM) algorithm which is a variant of the EM algorithm and its extensions. We analyze the conditions under which our model is identified and provide simulation results demonstrating consistency of our 2CCEM estimator. We apply the DFM to a dataset of 802 water and sanitation utilities from 43 countries and use the 2CCEM algorithm in order to estimate dynamic performance trajectories for each utility.