engleski

The analysis of private savings time series forecasting models in Croatia

The aim of this paper is to determine the private savings forecasting model for the Republic of Croatia. The analysis concerns microeconomic aspect of private savings. Private savings are approximated by households’ deposits, i.e. by the sum of total real household deposits in domestic and foreign currency. The paper describes characteristics of private savings in the Republic of Croatia and emphasizes the importance of savings. Forecasting methods used in this paper are simple average, moving average, weighted moving average, moving average with trend, single exponential smoothing and single exponential smoothing with trend. Forecasting of private savings is conducted using WinQsb 2.0 statistical software. Selected forecasting models are used and the forecasting is based on collected historical data from January 1998 to May 2011. Based on the comparison of selected forecast accuracy measures, the model that gives the most accurate forecasts is selected. The analysis has shown that the most accurate private savings forecasting method for the Republic of Croatia is exponential smoothing. Two exponential smoothing models give most accurate results. The single exponential smoothing model predicts that private savings will decrease in the period for which the analysis was conducted, but in a very small amount. The other model is single exponential smoothing with trend, which predicts that private savings level will increase in the period for which the analysis was conducted. After the selection of the most accurate forecasting model, the suitability of the selected forecasting model is tested by comparing the forecasted values, generated by the selected model, and the original values.

forecasting methods; simple average; moving average; exponential smoothing; private savings; forecast accuracy measures

Indexing/abstracting: EconLit, ProQuest, EBSCO ; A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National and University Library in Zagreb under 807592