The combination of forecasts using changing weights

This paper considers the combination of forecasts using changing weights derived from switching regression models or from smooth transition regression models. The regimes associated with the switches may not be known to the forecaster and thus need to be estimated. Several approaches to this problem are considered. In two empirical examples, these time-varying combining procedures produced smaller, in some cases substantially smaller, out-of-sample squared forecast errors than those obtained using the simple linear combining model.