Long-Term Economic Forecasting with Structured Analogies and Interaction Groups

Alghassab, Waleed, Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, Litsiou, Konstantia and Sapountzis, Stelios (2019) Long-Term Economic Forecasting with Structured Analogies and Interaction Groups. In: 39th International Symposium on Forecasting, 16 June 2019 - 19 June 2019, Thessaloniki, Greece.

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Abstract

In this study, we employ judgmental forecasting techniques, Structured Analogies and Interaction groups for long-term forecasting. The aim of the paper is not to evaluate forecasting accuracy per se but to highlight the potential of such techniques in this so complex and challenging task. The case study is about Saudi Arabia and its aim to adopt a diversification strategy to reduce its dependency on the oil sector, where oil revenue consists 90% of its budget currently. The study has four phases: Unaided Judgment, Structured Analogies, and Interaction Groups with Structured Analogies - all three using disguised data – before finally working on the undisguised case study under review over a significant amount of time. Adopting judgmental methods are attributed to three main reasons: in an attempt to derive long-term economic forecasts about Saudi Arabia’s ability to diversify its investments, to discover the impact of different factors on financial and economic outlooks, and to explore the main reasons for deviating the accuracy of financial and economic forecasts.