Macroeconomic Forecasting with Large Language Models
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00890v4
- Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2025 18:27:49 GMT
- Title: Macroeconomic Forecasting with Large Language Models
- Abstract summary: This paper presents a comparative analysis evaluating the accuracy of Large Language Models (LLMs) against traditional macro time series forecasting approaches.<n>Our findings provide valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of LLMs in forecasting macroeconomic time series, shedding light on their applicability in real-world scenarios.
- Score: 2.5234156040689233
- License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
- Abstract: This paper presents a comparative analysis evaluating the accuracy of Large Language Models (LLMs) against traditional macro time series forecasting approaches. In recent times, LLMs have surged in popularity for forecasting due to their ability to capture intricate patterns in data and quickly adapt across very different domains. However, their effectiveness in forecasting macroeconomic time series data compared to conventional methods remains an area of interest. To address this, we conduct a rigorous evaluation of LLMs against traditional macro forecasting methods, using as common ground the FRED-MD database. Our findings provide valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of LLMs in forecasting macroeconomic time series, shedding light on their applicability in real-world scenarios
Related papers
- Distribution-Aware Diffusion-LLM for Robust Ultra-Long-Term Time Series Forecasting [8.2867621159451]
Time series forecasting is a fundamental machine learning task.<n>Recent work has explored Large Language Models (LLMs) for this purpose due to their strong generalization, pattern recognition, and zero-shot or few-shot capabilities.<n>We propose a new framework Diffusion-LLM that integrates a conditional diffusion model into an LLM-based forecasting pipeline.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2026-06-22T14:18:28Z) - Nexus : An Agentic Framework for Time Series Forecasting [72.73790673303154]
Time series forecasting requires reasoning with unstructured contextual data such as news or events.<n>We introduce Nexus, a multi-agent forecasting framework that decomposes prediction into specialized stages.<n>We show that current-generation LLMs possess substantially stronger intrinsic forecasting ability than previously recognized.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2026-05-14T05:12:13Z) - Is More Context Always Better? Examining LLM Reasoning Capability for Time Interval Prediction [15.45305246863211]
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in reasoning and prediction across different domains.<n>This paper presents a systematic study investigating whether LLMs can predict time intervals between recurring user actions.<n>We benchmark state-of-the-art LLMs in zero-shot settings against both statistical and machine-learning models.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2026-01-15T07:18:40Z) - Beyond Naïve Prompting: Strategies for Improved Zero-shot Context-aided Forecasting with LLMs [57.82819770709032]
Large language models (LLMs) can be effective context-aided forecasters via na"ive direct prompting.<n>ReDP improves interpretability by eliciting explicit reasoning traces, allowing us to assess the model's reasoning over the context.<n>CorDP leverages LLMs solely to refine existing forecasts with context, enhancing their applicability in real-world forecasting pipelines.<n> IC-DP proposes embedding historical examples of context-aided forecasting tasks in the prompt, substantially improving accuracy even for the largest models.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-08-13T16:02:55Z) - Efficient Model Selection for Time Series Forecasting via LLMs [52.31535714387368]
We propose to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) as a lightweight alternative for model selection.
Our method eliminates the need for explicit performance matrices by utilizing the inherent knowledge and reasoning capabilities of LLMs.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-04-02T20:33:27Z) - Explainable Multi-modal Time Series Prediction with LLM-in-the-Loop [63.34626300024294]
TimeXL is a multi-modal prediction framework that integrates a prototype-based time series encoder.
It produces more accurate predictions and interpretable explanations.
Empirical evaluations on four real-world datasets demonstrate that TimeXL achieves up to 8.9% improvement in AUC.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-03-02T20:40:53Z) - Using Large Language Models for Expert Prior Elicitation in Predictive Modelling [53.54623137152208]
This study proposes using large language models (LLMs) to elicit expert prior distributions for predictive models.
We compare LLM-elicited and uninformative priors, evaluate whether LLMs truthfully generate parameter distributions, and propose a model selection strategy for in-context learning and prior elicitation.
Our findings show that LLM-elicited prior parameter distributions significantly reduce predictive error compared to uninformative priors in low-data settings.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-11-26T10:13:39Z) - BreakGPT: Leveraging Large Language Models for Predicting Asset Price Surges [55.2480439325792]
This paper introduces BreakGPT, a novel large language model (LLM) architecture adapted specifically for time series forecasting and the prediction of sharp upward movements in asset prices.
We showcase BreakGPT as a promising solution for financial forecasting with minimal training and as a strong competitor for capturing both local and global temporal dependencies.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-11-09T05:40:32Z) - Context is Key: A Benchmark for Forecasting with Essential Textual Information [87.3175915185287]
"Context is Key" (CiK) is a time series forecasting benchmark that pairs numerical data with diverse types of carefully crafted textual context.
We evaluate a range of approaches, including statistical models, time series foundation models, and LLM-based forecasters.
Our experiments highlight the importance of incorporating contextual information, demonstrate surprising performance when using LLM-based forecasting models, and also reveal some of their critical shortcomings.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-10-24T17:56:08Z) - Stock Price Prediction and Traditional Models: An Approach to Achieve Short-, Medium- and Long-Term Goals [0.0]
A comparative analysis of deep learning models and traditional statistical methods for stock price prediction uses data from the Nigerian stock exchange.
Deep learning models, particularly LSTM, outperform traditional methods by capturing complex, nonlinear patterns in the data.
The findings highlight the potential of deep learning for improving financial forecasting and investment strategies.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-09-29T11:20:20Z) - An Evaluation of Standard Statistical Models and LLMs on Time Series Forecasting [16.583730806230644]
This study highlights the key challenges that large language models encounter in the context of time series prediction.
The empirical results indicate that while large language models can perform well in zero-shot forecasting for certain datasets, their predictive accuracy diminishes notably when confronted with diverse time series data and traditional signals.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-08-09T05:13:03Z) - A Comprehensive Evaluation of Large Language Models on Temporal Event Forecasting [45.0261082985087]
We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of Large Language Models (LLMs) for temporal event forecasting.
We find that directly integrating raw texts into the input of LLMs does not enhance zero-shot extrapolation performance.
In contrast, incorporating raw texts in specific complex events and fine-tuning LLMs significantly improves performance.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-07-16T11:58:54Z) - Time Series Forecasting with LLMs: Understanding and Enhancing Model Capabilities [46.02234423159257]
Large language models (LLMs) have been applied in many fields and have developed rapidly in recent years.
Recent works treat large language models as emphzero-shot time series reasoners without further fine-tuning.
Our study shows that LLMs perform well in predicting time series with clear patterns and trends, but face challenges with datasets lacking periodicity.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-02-16T17:15:28Z) - Forecasting inflation using disaggregates and machine learning [0.0]
We consider different disaggregation levels for inflation and employ a range of traditional time series techniques as well as linear and nonlinear machine learning (ML) models to deal with a larger number of predictors.
For many forecast horizons, the aggregation of disaggregated forecasts performs just as well survey-based expectations and models that generate forecasts using the aggregate directly.
Our results reinforce the benefits of using models in a data-rich environment for inflation forecasting, including aggregating disaggregated forecasts from ML techniques.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2023-08-22T04:01:40Z) - Evaluating and Explaining Large Language Models for Code Using Syntactic
Structures [74.93762031957883]
This paper introduces ASTxplainer, an explainability method specific to Large Language Models for code.
At its core, ASTxplainer provides an automated method for aligning token predictions with AST nodes.
We perform an empirical evaluation on 12 popular LLMs for code using a curated dataset of the most popular GitHub projects.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2023-08-07T18:50:57Z) - Bayesian Bilinear Neural Network for Predicting the Mid-price Dynamics
in Limit-Order Book Markets [84.90242084523565]
Traditional time-series econometric methods often appear incapable of capturing the true complexity of the multi-level interactions driving the price dynamics.
By adopting a state-of-the-art second-order optimization algorithm, we train a Bayesian bilinear neural network with temporal attention.
By addressing the use of predictive distributions to analyze errors and uncertainties associated with the estimated parameters and model forecasts, we thoroughly compare our Bayesian model with traditional ML alternatives.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2022-03-07T18:59:54Z)
This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.
This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.