Assignment 1 with solution

Assignment 1 You are the chief analyst to monitor an eastern city’s government consumption expenditures. Using the city’s quarterly government consumption data {yt} measured in billion dollars from 2007-Q1 to 2014-Q3, you are trying to estimate the linear trend model: yt =  + t + ut, where ut ~ N(0, ).
(A) Supposing t = 1 for the starting quarter (i.e., 2007-Q1), then what is t for 2014-Q3? (1 mark)
(B) Suppose your OLS (ordinary least squares) estimates for the trend model are = 1.62 and = 3.55, and the sum of squared residuals (SSR) = ût2 = 725. Based on your estimated trend model, construct a point forecast and an interval forecast for the city’s government consumption expenditures in 2014-Q4. (9 marks)
(C) It is calculated that = 928. Use the Durbin-Watson (DW) test to determine if there is (first-order) serial-correlation in the population errors {ut} at the 5% significance level. (The corresponding lower and upper critical values of the DW-test is dL = 1.363 and dU = 1.496 respectively.) (5 marks)

2. The quarterly data for U.S.’s beverage manufacturer product shipments (yt) from Q1-1992 to Q4-2006 is given in the data file: Asgn1_data.xls, based on which some models are required to estimate and some forecasts to make.
2.1 Estimating trend and making trend forecasts (11 marks)
(A) Indicate the patterns in the data (by plotting the data and observing the graph). (1 mark)
(B) Fit a regression trend line ŷt =+t to the data using the ordinary least squares (OLS) method, and write down the fitted trend line. (3 marks)
(C) Denoting the in-sample fitted errors by et = yt – ŷt, find the standard error of regression () for the linear trend model and write down the formula for it (using et). (2 marks)
(D) Is the fitted trend line a good one? Comment using R2 and t-test. (1 mark)
(E) Based on your trend line, forecast the shipments (yt) values from Q1-2007 to Q4-2007. Also find the confidence interval for the