The highly prized ability to make financial plans with some certainty about the future comes from the core fields of economics. In recent years the availability of more data, analytical tools of greater precision, and ex post studies of business decisions have increased demand for information about economic forecasting. Volumes 2A and 2B, which follows Nobel laureate Clive Granger's Volume 1 (2006), concentrate on two major subjects. Volume 2A covers innovations in methodologies, specifically macroforecasting and forecasting financial variables. Volume 2B investigates commercial applications, with sections on forecasters' objectives and methodologies. Experts provide surveys of a large range of literature scattered across applied and theoretical statistics journals as well as econometrics and empirical economics journals. The Handbook of Economic Forecasting Volumes 2A and 2B provide a unique compilation of chapters giving a coherent overview of forecasting theory and applications in one place and with up-to-date accounts of all major conceptual issues. Focuses on innovation in economic forecasting via industry applications Presents coherent summaries of subjects in economic forecasting that stretch from methodologies to applications Makes details about economic forecasting accessible to scholars in fields outside economics

An updated new edition of the comprehensive guide to better business forecasting Many companies still look at quantitative forecasting methods with suspicion, but a new awareness is emerging across many industries as more businesses and professionals recognize the value of integrating demand data (point-of-sale and syndicated scanner data) into the forecasting process. Demand-Driven Forecasting equips you with solutions that can sense, shape, and predict future demand using highly sophisticated methods and tools. From a review of the most basic forecasting methods to the most advanced and innovative techniques in use today, this guide explains demand-driven forecasting, offering a fundamental understanding of the quantitative methods used to sense, shape, and predict future demand within a structured process. Offering a complete overview of the latest business forecasting concepts and applications, this revised Second Edition of Demand-Driven Forecasting is the perfect guide for professionals who need to improve the accuracy of their sales forecasts. Completely updated to include the very latest concepts and methods in forecasting Includes real case studies and examples, actual data, and graphical displays and tables to illustrate how effective implementation works Ideal for CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, vice presidents of supply chain, vice presidents of demand forecasting and planning, directors of demand forecasting and planning, supply chain managers, demand planning managers, marketing analysts, forecasting analysts, financial managers, and any other professional who produces or contributes to forecasts Accurate forecasting is vital to success in today's challenging business climate. Demand-Driven Forecasting offers proven and effective insight on making sure your forecasts are right on the money.

An up-to-date look at point and figure charting from one of the foremost authorities in the field If you're looking for an investment approach that has stood the test of time—during both bull and bear markets—and is easy enough to learn, whether you're an expert or aspiring investor, then Point and Figure Charting, Fourth Edition is the book for you. Filled with in-depth insights and expert advice, this practical guide will help you grow your assets in any market. In this reliable resource, the world's top point and figure charting expert, Tom Dorsey returns to explain how traders and investors alike can use this classic technique—borne out of the irrefutable laws of supply and demand—to identify and capitalize on market trends. Describes, step-by-step, how to create, maintain, and interpret your own point and figure charts with regard to markets, sectors, and individual securities Explains how to use other indicators, including moving averages, advance-decline lines, and relative strength to augment point and figure analysis Reveals how to use this approach to track and forecast market prices and develop an overall investment strategy Skillfully explains how to use point and figure analysis to evaluate the strength of international markets and rotate exposure from country to country Today's investment arena is filled with a variety of strategies that never seem to deliver on what they promise. But there is one approach to investment analysis that has proven itself in all types of markets, and it's found right here in Point and Figure Charting, Fourth Edition.

Solar Energy Forecasting and Resource Assessment is a vital text for solar energy professionals, addressing a critical gap in the core literature of the field. As major barriers to solar energy implementation, such as materials cost and low conversion efficiency, continue to fall, issues of intermittency and reliability have come to the fore. Scrutiny from solar project developers and their financiers on the accuracy of long-term resource projections and grid operators’ concerns about variable short-term power generation have made the field of solar forecasting and resource assessment pivotally important. This volume provides an authoritative voice on the topic, incorporating contributions from an internationally recognized group of top authors from both industry and academia, focused on providing information from underlying scientific fundamentals to practical applications and emphasizing the latest technological developments driving this discipline forward. The only reference dedicated to forecasting and assessing solar resources enables a complete understanding of the state of the art from the world’s most renowned experts. Demonstrates how to derive reliable data on solar resource availability and variability at specific locations to support accurate prediction of solar plant performance and attendant financial analysis. Provides cutting-edge information on recent advances in solar forecasting through monitoring, satellite and ground remote sensing, and numerical weather prediction.

Based on forty years of experience and research, this book provides guidance on forecasting for strategic decision making. It includes methodology, tools, and models. It also explains how to apply sanity checks to existing forecasts to rank project valuations, identify project risks, and select the higher value creation projects. The author discusses how to assess the feasibility of large projects, analyze forecasting models to determine controllable levers, and create the conditions needed for forecasts to materialize.

"The Freakonomics of big data." —Stein Kretsinger, founding executive of Advertising.com; former lead analyst at Capital One This book is easily understood by all readers. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book entices lay-readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques. You have been predicted — by companies, governments, law enforcement, hospitals, and universities. Their computers say, "I knew you were going to do that!" These institutions are seizing upon the power to predict whether you're going to click, buy, lie, or die. Why? For good reason: predicting human behavior combats financial risk, fortifies healthcare, conquers spam, toughens crime fighting, and boosts sales. How? Prediction is powered by the world's most potent, booming unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn. Predictive analytics unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future — lifting a bit of the fog off our hazy view of tomorrow — means pay dirt. In this rich, entertaining primer, former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction: What type of mortgage risk Chase Bank predicted before the recession. Predicting which people will drop out of school, cancel a subscription, or get divorced before they are even aware of it themselves. Why early retirement decreases life expectancy and vegetarians miss fewer flights. Five reasons why organizations predict death, including one health insurance company. How U.S. Bank, European wireless carrier Telenor, and Obama's 2012 campaign calculated the way to most strongly influence each individual. How IBM's Watson computer used predictive modeling to answer questions and beat the human champs on TV's Jeopardy! How companies ascertain untold, private truths — how Target figures out you're pregnant and Hewlett-Packard deduces you're about to quit your job. How judges and parole boards rely on crime-predicting computers to decide who stays in prison and who goes free. What's predicted by the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, IBM, the IRS, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Pfizer, and Wikipedia. A truly omnipresent science, predictive analytics affects everyone, every day. Although largely unseen, it drives millions of decisions, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate. Predictive analytics transcends human perception. This book's final chapter answers the riddle: What often happens to you that cannot be witnessed, and that you can't even be sure has happened afterward — but that can be predicted in advance? Whether you are a consumer of it — or consumed by it — get a handle on the power of Predictive Analytics.

Supply chain professionals: master pioneering techniques for integrating demand and supply, and create demand forecasts that are far more accurate and useful! In Demand and Supply Integration, Dr. Mark Moon presents the specific design characteristics of a world-class demand forecasting management process, showing how to effectively integrate demand forecasting within a comprehensive Demand and Supply Integration (DSI) process. Writing for supply chain professionals in any business, government agency, or military procurement organization, Moon explains what DSI is, how it differs from approaches such as SandOP, and how to recognize the symptoms of failures to sufficiently integrate demand and supply. He outlines the key characteristics of successful DSI implementations, shows how to approach Demand Forecasting as a management process, and guides you through understanding, selecting, and applying the best available qualitative and quantitative forecasting techniques. You'll learn how to thoroughly reflect market intelligence in your forecasts; measure your forecasting performance; implement state-of-the-art demand forecasting systems; manage Demand Reviews, and much more. For wide audiences of supply chain, logistics, and operations management professionals at all levels, from analyst and manager to Director, Vice President, and Chief Supply Chain Officer; and for researchers and graduate students in the field.

Applied Data Mining for Forecasting Using SAS, by Tim Rey, Arthur Kordon, and Chip Wells, introduces and describes approaches for mining large time series data sets. Written for forecasting practitioners, engineers, statisticians, and economists, the book details how to select useful candidate input variables for time series regression models in environments when the number of candidates is large, and identifies the correlation structure between selected candidate inputs and the forecast variable.

This book is the definitive guide to cash flow statement analysis and forecasting. It takes the reader from an introduction about how cash flows move within a business, through to a detailed review of the contents of a cash flow statement. This is followed by detailed guidance on how to restate cash flows into a template format. The book shows how to use the template to analyse the data from start up, growth, mature and declining companies, and those using US GAAP and IAS reporting. The book includes real world examples from such companies as Black and Decker (US), Fiat (Italy) and Tesco (UK). A section on cash flow forecasting includes full coverage of spreadsheet risk and good practice. Complete with chapters of particular interest to those involved in credit markets as lenders or counter-parties, those running businesses and those in equity investing, this book is the definitive guide to understanding and interpreting cash flow data.

In the past few years, we’ve seen many data products based on predictive modeling. These products range from weather forecasting to recommendation engines like Amazon's. Prediction technology can be interesting and mathematically elegant, but we need to take the next step: going from recommendations to products that can produce optimal strategies for meeting concrete business objectives. We already know how to build these products: they've been in use for the past decade or so, but they're not as common as they should be. This report shows how to take the next step: to go from simple predictions and recommendations to a new generation of data products with the potential to revolutionize entire industries.

Published in 1991, the first edition of Forecasting and Management of Technology was one of the leading handful of books to deal with the topic of forecasting of technology and technology management as this discipline was emerging. The new, revised edition of this book will build on this knowledge in the context of business organizations that now place a greater emphasis on technology to stay on the cutting edge of development. The scope of this edition has broadened to include management of technology content that is relevant to now to executives in organizations while updating and strengthening the technology forecasting and analysis content that the first edition is reputed for. Updated by the original author team, plus new author Scott Cunningham, the book takes into account what the authors see as the innovations to technology management in the last 17 years: the Internet; the greater focus on group decision-making including process management and mechanism design; and desktop software that has transformed the analytical capabilities of technology managers. Included in this book will be 5 case studies from various industries that show how technology management is applied in the real world.

This book, written by a 30-year veteran in planning, market research, and running a business, shows you how to educate your guesses with real world common sense, to make practical business forecasts, and to use them to manage your business better. While it goes through some of the more sophisticated techniques as well, its focus is on what people really use. The book includes cases, stories, examples, and real experience.

Haven't women gotten everything they want? Economic power? Social influence? Business clout? Yes, but it turns out that these fantastic gains have come at a heavy price, as consumer goods experts Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre discovered in an unprecedented study of 12,000 women in forty countries. That relentless upward climb has left women feeling stressed out, time starved, and overburdened. As a result, they look to products and services that will help them claw back time, juggle multiple roles, and capture a few moments of enjoyment. Women want more—much more, in every category of goods and services. And no matter what their age or economic situation or where they live in the world, women will spend trillions of dollars over the next decade on the brands that truly deliver: Home-cleaning products that enable women to do in an hour what used to take a day Financial-services products that recognize that women control half the United States' wealth Food products that help keep the whole family happy and healthy Health care services designed for working-women's hectic schedules In the coming years, women's influence will be so enormous that it will not only help bring us out of the economic downturn but also create one of the most dramatic market opportunities of our lifetime—bigger than the rise of China and India; more sustainable than any bailout package. Through quantitative data, profiles of individual women, and stories of winning companies, Women Want More provides business leaders with the understanding and practices they need to capture their share of the rising "female economy."

A budget is a financial action plan for an organization. This guide will teach you how to: - Forecast future business results, such as sales volume, revenues, and expenses - Reconcile those forecasts to organizational goals - Obtain organizational support for your proposed budget - Fine-tune your budget over time

Forecasting returns is as important as forecasting volatility in multiple areas of finance. This topic, essential to practitioners, is also studied by academics. In this new book, Dr Stephen Satchell brings together a collection of leading thinkers and practitioners from around the world who address this complex problem using the latest quantitative techniques. Forecasting expected returns is an essential aspect of finance and highly technical The first collection of papers to present new and developing techniques *International authors present both academic and practitioner perspectives

What makes seasoned IT professionals run for cover? Answer: Forecasting Oracle Performance! Craig Shallahamer is an Oracle performance expert with over 18 years of experience. His book is the first to focus not on the problem of solving today's problem, but squarely on the problem of forecasting the future performance of an Oracle database. Other Oracle performance books are good for putting out fires; Craig's book helps you avoid all the heat in the first place. If you’re an IT practioner who appreciates application over mathematical proofs than you’ll be pleasantly surprised! Each chapter is filled with examples to transform the theory, mathematics, and methods into something you can practically apply. Craig's goal is to teach you about real-word Oracle performance forecasting. Period. There is no hidden agenda. This book is a kind of training course. After reading, studying, and practicing the material covered in this book, you to be able to confidently, responsibly, and professionally forecast performance and system capacity in a wide variety of real-life situations. If you are more management-minded (or want to be), you will be delighted with the service level management focus. Forecasting makes good business sense because it maximizes the return on IT investment and minimizes unplanned down time. To those who think forecasting is a waste of money: well...obviously, they’ve never been on the evening news because their company lost millions of dollars in revenue and brand destruction because of poorly performing or unavailable systems. Without a doubt, you will be equipped to deal with the realities of forecasting Oracle performance. But this book gives you more. Not only will you receive a technical and mathematical perspective, but also a communication, a presentation, and a management perspective. This is career building stuff and immensely satisfying! What you'll learn This book is a “how-to” book filled with examples to transform theory and mathematics into something you can practically apply. You will learn how to use a variety of forecasting models, which will enable you to methodically: Help manage service levels from a business value perspective Identify the risk of over utilized resources Predict what component of an architecture is at risk Predict when a system will be at risk Develop multiple risk mitigating strategies to ensure service levels are maintained Characterize a complex Oracle workload Who this book is for IT professionals who must ensure their production Oracle systems are meeting service levels, in part, through forecasting performance, identifying risk, and developing solutions to ensure systems are available without wasting budget. Readers include database administrators, IT managers, developers, capacity planners, systems architects, systems integrators.

Budgets are like road maps -- they provide a direction for a corporates financial management. Balance sheets and statements of revenues also provide insights into how well a company is following that direction. But cash flow and cash flow forecasts are what guide the day-to-day itinerary for an organization. Budgets and cash flow are dynamic -- adjustments and changes can and should occur. If you understand what you are looking at, you can use cash flow to create better budgets and thus more accurate cash flow forecasting. Cash Flow Forecasting outlines the techniques required to undertake a detailed analysis of the cash flow dynamics of the business from both a historical and forward looking perspective. Cash Flow Forecasting explains how to: * Determine appropriate cash flow figures from pro forma financial statements * Interpret detailed cash flow forecasts and understand the difference between profit and cash flow * Conserve or generate cash in the short term * Evaluate different methods of project evaluation * Recognize the limitations of accounting information in valuing companies *Inspired by basic entry level training courses that have been developed by major international banks worldwide * Will enable students and those already in the finance profession to gain an understanding of the basic information and principles of cash flow forecasting * Includes questions with answers, study topics, practical "real world" examples and extensive bibliography

Women now drive some 80% of all buying decisions. By 2010, they'll account for half of America's private wealth: $13 trillion dollars. A few remarkable companies have learned how to refocus on women -- and, in so doing, have achieved truly stunning results. In The Power of the Purse, top journalist Fara Warner takes you behind the scenes at those companies, revealing how they did it -- and how you can, too. Unlike previous books on marketing to women, this one doesn't settle for generalities: it offers in-depth, start-to-finish case studies. Discover how McDonald's turned around its business by recognizing women as full-fledged consumers, not just 'Moms.' Learn how Kodak's digital camera business soared from fourth to first by recognizing women's importance as family 'memory makers'. See how P G built Swiffer into a cultural revolution, and how the diamond industry did the same for right-hand rings. Watch Bratz topple Barbie, Torrid create its enormously successful plus-size stores for teenagers, and Avon connect with a radically new generation of women. From Nike to Home Depot, each story is unique -- but in every case, these companies put women at the center of their strategies, and listened intently to what real women consumers were telling them. It's not about 'painting your products pink': it's about transforming the way you think about women. Do that, and you'll create products that sell better to everyone.