Time-series properties and forecasts of crude steel consumption in the UK

This paper makes use of simple graphical techniques, a seasonal unit root test and a structural time-series model to obtain information on the time series properties of UK crude steel consumption. It shows that steel consumption has, after the removal of some quite substantial outliers, a fairly constant seasonal pattern, and a well-defined but stochastic business cycle. The long-run movement in steel consumption also appears to be stochastic in nature. These characteristics were used to identify a structural time-series model and the ex-post forecasts obtained from it performed reasonably well. Finally, this paper presents some ex-ante quarterly forecasts for crude steel consumption to the year 1999.