FORECASTING IMPORTS

Two methods are used in the preparation of the official import forecasts in Britain. There is the detailed commodity-by-commodity approach, designed to bring in any special factors or information about particular commodities. There is also the aggregate approach, which attempts to find relationships between the volume of imports and various national expenditure series. This note describes a series of experiments conducted to investigate and, if possible, improve the second of these two approaches. It does not attempt to provide a full theory of import behaviour. It is simply concerned to find a method of import forecasting that works reasonably satisfactorily over a short period of 1-2 years.