Forecasting Temporally and Contemporaneously Aggregated Known Processes

A temporal aggregate is a variable obtained by aggregating over time, that is, weighted values associated with consecutive time periods are added up. For instance, the annual Gross National Product (GNP) is the sum of quarterly or monthly GNP values. As another example, the monthly number of unemployed persons may be computed as the average of the daily unemployment figures or, alternatively, the value of a particular key day, e.g., the last working day of the month, may be used. In both cases the unemployment figure is a weighted sum of the daily numbers. While equal weights are associated with each day in the first alternative, the last day gets a weight of one and all other days get zero weights in the second alternative.