A linear benchmark for forecasting GDP growth and inflation?

Predicting the future evolution of GDP growth and inflation is a central concern in economics. Forecasts are typically produced either from economic theory‐based models or from simple linear time series models. While a time series model can provide a reasonable benchmark to evaluate the value added of economic theory relative to the pure explanatory power of the past behavior of the variable, recent developments in time series analysis suggest that more sophisticated time series models could provide more serious benchmarks for economic models. In this paper we evaluate whether these complicated time series models can outperform standard linear models for forecasting GDP growth and inflation. We consider a large variety of models and evaluation criteria, using a bootstrap algorithm to evaluate the statistical significance of our results. Our main conclusion is that in general linear time series models can hardly be beaten if they are carefully specified. However, we also identify some important cases where the adoption of a more complicated benchmark can alter the conclusions of economic analyses about the driving forces of GDP growth and inflation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

带有通胀风险的退休后期最优投资管理

考虑通货膨胀的影响,研究了一个确定缴费养老计划退休后期最优投资决策问题.自退休时刻开始,退休者定期从账户里抽取一定的金额维持日常支出,然后将剩余的财富投资于一个无风险资产、一个股票指数和一个通胀指数债券,直到强制购买年金的时刻.为保障退休后的正常生活,退休者在每个时刻设定投资的目标值,采取二次效用函数衡量投资财富水平和目标值的差距,并选择最优的投资策略以最小化平均累计差距.运用动态规划和随机控制方法,得到了没有上方惩罚的目标值、最优投资策略、最优值函数、破产概率以及终端财富与目标值差距的分布函数等指标的显式表达式.运用数学分析和数值分析手段,得到了每个时刻目标值的性质,分析了终端目标值和消费金额对破产概率的影响,研究了物价指数的瞬间变化率和波动率对财富值与目标值的差距、各时刻财富均值以及破产概率的影响.