Macroeconomic Forecasting with Factor-Augmented Adjusted Band Regression

Previous findings indicate that the inclusion of dynamic factors obtained from a large set of predictors can improve macroeconomic forecasts. In this paper, we explore three possible further developments: (i) using automatic criteria for choosing those factors which have the greatest predictive power; (ii) using only a small subset of preselected predictors for the calculation of the factors; and (iii) utilizing frequency-domain information for the estimation of the factor models. Reanalyzing a standard macroeconomic dataset of 143 U.S. time series and using the major measures of economic activity as dependent variables, we find that (i) is not helpful, whereas focusing on the low-frequency components of the factors and disregarding the high-frequency components can actually improve the forecasting performance for some variables. In the case of the gross domestic product, a combination of (ii) and (iii) yields the best results.