Forecasting the Spanish economy with an augmented VAR-DSGE model

Abstract

Over the past 10 years dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models have become an important tool in quantitative macroeconomics. However, DSGE models were not considered as a forecasting tool until very recently. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we compare the forecasting ability of a canonical DSGE model for the Spanish economy with other standard econometric techniques. More precisely, we compare out-of-sample forecasts obtained from different estimation methods of the DSGE model with the forecasts produced by a VAR and a Bayesian VAR. Second, we propose a new method for combining DSGE and VAR models (in what we have called Augmented VAR-DSGE) through the expansion of the variable space where the VAR operates with artificial series obtained from a DSGE model. The results indicate that the out-of-sample forecasting performance of the proposed method is capable of competing with all the considered alternatives, and thus even a simple canonical RBC model contains useful information that can be used for forecasting purposes. © 2011 The Author(s).