Exploiting the interpretability and forecasting ability of the RBF-AR model for nonlinear time series

Authors:Gan Min*; Chen C L Philip; Chen Long; Zhang Chun Yang
Source:International Journal of Systems Science, 2016, 47(8): 1868-1876.
DOI:10.1080/00207721.2014.955552

Summary

In this paper, we explore the radial basis function network-based state-dependent autoregressive (RBF-AR) model by modelling and forecasting an ecological time series: the famous Canadian lynx data. The interpretability of the state-dependent coefficients of the RBF-AR model is studied. It is found that the RBF-AR model can account for the phenomena of phase and density dependencies in the Canadian lynx cycle. The post-sample forecasting performance of one-step and two-step ahead predictors of the RBF-AR model is compared with that of other competitive time-series models including various parametric and non-parametric models. The results show the usefulness of the RBF-AR model in this ecological time-series modelling.

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