Forecasting white goods in a recession

The forecasting models discussed in this paper deal with the sales prospects of three categories of an unspecified white good. The forecasts pertain to UK deliveries both of a particular firm and of all UK suppliers. The forecasting approach essentially resorts to multiple-regression models that employ leading indicators with liberal resort to polynomial distributed lags. Considerable structural differences in these models as between firm and industry reflect distinctive features of the firm's product line and policies. The models are first analysed in terms of their predictive performance, both in-sample and ex-sample. Features of these models and of their predictions are then considered in terms of what they indicate about the firm's policy options.