The robustness and accuracy of Box-Jenkins ARIMA in modeling and forecasting household debt in South Africa
Abstract
Abstract: This paper adopted the Box-Jenkins methodology to estimate a univariate time series model. Quarterly data collected from the South African Reserve Bank covering the period 1994 to 2014 was used. The initial plot of the series revealed that household debt is explained by an irregular and non-seasonal component. Owing to the non stationarity of the series, first differencing was applied to induce stationarity. The ACFs and PACFs identified six models. Of the six identified models,ð´ð‘…ð¼ð‘€ð´ 3, 1, 0 was selected according to the standard error estimates and the information criteria. The proposed model passed all the diagnostic tests and was further used for producing ten period forecasts of household debt. The forecasted household debt rates obtained were above 75% and within confidence bounds of 95%. Insample and out-of-sampling forecasts moved together confirming the reliability of the model in forecasting household debt and vigour in predictive ability. The proposed model exhibited the best performance in terms of Max APE and Max AE and ascertained the robustness and accuracy of the BoxJenkins ARIMA in forecasting. Both a trend of the data captured and non-seasonal peaks were predicted by the model. These forecasts were proven to be realistic and a true reflection of economic reality in the country. The paper recommended a non-seasonalð´ð‘…ð¼ð‘€ð´ 3, 1, 0 be used by researchers, policy makers and decision makers of different countries to make forecasts of household debt. The South African authorities were also encouraged to use this model to produce further forecasts of the series when making long term planning.Downloads
Copyright (c) 2014 Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author (s) should affirm that the material has not been published previously. It has not been submitted and it is not under consideration by any other journal. At the same time author (s) need to execute a publication permission agreement to assume the responsibility of the submitted content and any omissions and errors therein. After submission of a revised paper in the light of suggestions of the reviewers, editorial team edits and formats manuscripts to bring uniformity and standardization in published material.
This work will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and under condition of the license, users are free to read, copy, remix, transform, redistribute, download, print, search or link to the full texts of articles and even build upon their work as long as they credit the author for the original work. Moreover, as per journal policy author (s) hold and retain copyrights without any restrictions.