Prediction of quantiles by statistical learning and application to GDP forecasting

Abstract

In this paper, we tackle the problem of prediction and confidence intervals for time series using a statistical learning approach and quantile loss functions. In a first time, we show that the Gibbs estimator is able to predict as well as the best predictor in a given family for a wide set of loss functions. In particular, using the quantile loss function of [1], this allows to build confidence intervals. We apply these results to the problem of prediction and confidence regions for the French Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, with promising results. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.