Bank of America Corporation
Predicting economic conditions

Abstract:

Computer-implemented methods for identifying or assessing any type of risk and/or opportunity that may arise can include either, alone or in combination, band pass filtering, principal component analysis, random matrix theory analysis, synchronization analysis, and early-warning detection. With one approach, principal component analysis is applied to a times series. Resulting normalized eigenvector content is sorted and distances between the normalized eigenvector content are determined, where the dispersion level of the distances is indicative of an economic instability of an economic system. Each technique can also be viewed as a process that takes a set of inputs and converts it to a set of outputs. These outputs can be used as inputs for a subsequent process or the outputs may be directly actionable for formulating certain economic predictions to make certain decisions.