Forecasting Related Time Series

A collection of time series are “related” if they follow similar stochastic processes and/or they are statistically dependent. This paper proposes a related time series (RTS) forecasting model that exploits these relationships. The model's foundation is a set of univariate Gaussian autoregressions, one for each series, which are then augmented to incorporate stochastic volatility, heavy-tailed innovations, additive outliers, time-varying parameters and common factors. The model is estimated and forecasts are computed using Bayesian methods with hierarchical priors that pool information across series. Computationally efficient MCMC methods are proposed. The RTS model is applied to three datasets and yields encouraging pseudo-out-of-sample forecasting results.