Forecasting is required in many situations. Stocking an inventory may require forecasts of demand months in advance. Telecommunication routing requires traffic forecasts a few minutes ahead. Whatever the circumstances or time horizons involved, forecasting is an important aid in effective and efficient planning. This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to forecasting methods and presents enough information about each method for readers to use them sensibly.

If both producers and consumers demand forecasts based solely on their forecasting ability, then the equilibrium employment of analysts, a higher cost factor than time series models, implies that analysts must produce better forecasts than time series models. Past studies of comparative earnings forecast accuracy have concluded otherwise. Using nonparametric statistics that provide proper yet powerful tests, we find that Box-Jenkins time series models consistently produce better forecasts than martingale and submartingale earnings models; but Value Line Investment Survey consistently makes significantly better earnings forecasts than the Box-Jenkins models.

The disappearance of central planned economies left politicians, researchers, consultants, and academics with an interest in economies in transition in vagueness about the actual state of the economy and its short and medium term prospects. This volume provides the reader with information on how to deal with the statistical shortcomings of economies in transition. Most economic variables published for these countries tend to encompass a short period of time or they possess a low measurement quality. Moreover, most of the series are subject to structural breaks, due to the change in the patterns of economic reactions over time. The contributions in this volume show various ways to solve or at least to lessen the before mentioned problems.