Short-term forecasting of COVID-19 deaths

This online forecasting tool for coronavirus deaths over the short-term has been compiled by members of the Climate Econometrics team, alumna Jennifer Castle (DPhil Economics 2003, Research Fellow 2006-2009) and Nuffield Fellows Jurgen Doornik and David Hendry.

The forecasting approach is described ─ and the quality of the forecasts assessed ─ in a recent paper published in the ​Journal of Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapy (27 October 2020).

For more from Jennifer, Jurgen and David on the utility of forecasting in these times, see this piece on VoxEU, their entry on the Institute for New Economic Thinking's coronavirus blog post and their letter to the Financial Times. They have also written a piece for The Conversation about 'Why short-term forecasts can be better than models for predicting how pandemics evolve' (30 June 2020) and for the Economics Observatory on 'Can we get accurate short-term forecasts of coronavirus cases and deaths? (6 July 2020).

Jennifer also spoke to The Royal Economic Society about 'What is a scenario, projection and a forecast – how good or useful are they particularly now?' on 17 July 2020.

(Jurgen Doornik, David Hendry and Jennifer Castle, 'Statistical Short-Term Forecasting Of The COVID-19 Pandemic'. Published in Journal of Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapy 6:046, doi:10.24966/CIIT-8844/1000046)