Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

3-2022

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel supervised learning technique for forecasting: scaled principal component analysis (sPCA). The sPCA improves the traditional principal component analysis (PCA) by scaling each predictor with its predictive slope on the target to be forecasted. Unlike the PCA that maximizes the common variation of the predictors, the sPCA assigns more weight to those predictors with stronger forecasting power. In a general factor framework, we show that, under some appropriate conditions on data, the sPCA forecast beats the PCA forecast, and when these conditions break down, extensive simulations indicate that the sPCA still has a large chance to outperform the PCA. A real data example on macroeconomic forecasting shows that the sPCA has better performance in general.

Keywords

Forecasting, PCA, Big Data, Dimension Reduction, Machine Learning

Discipline

Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods

Research Areas

Finance

Publication

Management Science

Volume

68

Issue

3

First Page

1678

Last Page

1695

ISSN

0025-1909

Identifier

10.1287/mnsc.2021.4020

Publisher

Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4020

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