Longer- Term Forecasting

Moving averages, exponential smoothing and decomposition methods tend to be utilized for short to medium term forecasting. Longer term forecasting is generally less detailed and is usually concerned along with forecasting the main trends on a year to year basis. Any of the techniques of regression analysis given in the preceding chapters could be utilized depending on the assumptions about linearity or nonlinearity, the number of independent variables and so on. The least squares regression approach is often utilized for trend forecasting.