2023-05-16
Winner of the Bank of Lithuania award presented a more accurate way to forecast GDP growth
On Monday, the winner of the Bank of Lithuania Award for Dissertation in the Field of Economics Dr Jonas Striaukas, associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School, gave a public lecture on machine learning applications for time series data and their relevance for policy institutions.
In the public lecture, Dr Striaukas presented econometric methods described in his dissertation based on machine learning and adapted for modelling high dimensional mixed frequency data. Machine learning solutions are all around us, and economic forecasts are no exception. Dr Striaukas also covered several new and interesting areas of empirical application.
Dr Striaukas argues that nowcasting gross domestic product (GDP) growth is a particularly relevant application area for central banks.
“In my dissertation, I show that compared to the methods currently used by central banks, more accurate forecasts can be obtained with the methods I propose, so they are a more accurate tool for central banks to monitor economic activity in real time,” said the associate professor.
Jonas Striaukas defended his dissertation at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
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In February, the Board of the Bank of Lithuania awarded a prize of €5,000 to Jonas Striaukas for his thesis “Estimation and Inference for High Dimensional Mixed Frequency Data Models”.
Every year in August and September the Bank of Lithuania invites economic researchers and those with a PhD in economics and finance to apply for the Bank of Lithuania Award for Dissertation in the Field of Economics.
The papers submitted are assessed by a commission comprising researchers from the Bank of Lithuania’s Center for Excellence in Finance and Economic Research (CEFER) and representatives of Lithuanian and foreign universities. More on the awards granted by the Bank of Lithuania is available here.