Today’s personal income and spending update for November is widely expected to post a rebound after October’s disappointing results. The Capital Spectator’s average econometric forecasts for these indicators echo the market’s outlook: +0.3% for income and +0.4% for spending in today’s release. The gains are in line with market’s expectations. The release for this data hits the street later today at 8:30am eastern via the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Here’s how the numbers stack up, followed by brief definitions of the methodologies behind The Capital Spectator’s projections:


VAR-2: A vector autoregression model that analyzes two economic time series in search of interdependent relationships through history. The forecasts are run in R with the “vars” package using historical data for the following indicators: personal income and personal consumption expenditures (in current $).
VAR-4: A second VAR model (see overview above) uses four indicators: personal income and personal consumption expenditures (in current $), plus private payrolls and industrial production.
ARIMA: An autoregressive integrated moving average model that analyzes the historical record of personal income and spending (separately) in R via the “forecast” package.
ES: An exponential smoothing model that analyzes the historical record of personal income and spending (separately) in R via the “forecast” package.