KEEN BMF Project

Project Duration: February 2018 – October 2018

Lead: Dr Erez Yerushalmi  (Senior Lecturer in Economics)

Project Members: Steve Harris (Head of Economics) and Ruth Edwards (BCU KEEN)

Funder: European Regional Development Fund, Knowledge Exchange & Enterprise Network (KEEN)

Research objectives

Birmingham City University will train and supervise an economist within the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF). 

They will develop a forecast model of sales for the Builders and Merchants industry, and produce the first industry report, which will become a quarterly BMF publication.

Method

For the duration of the project, the BCU-KEEN project will fund a junior economist to work in BMF. The BMF/BCU team will select the best candidate for this role. Dr Erez Yerushalmi will provide the technical supervision necessary to deliver an industry forecast model and the first quarterly report.

The forecast model will use econometric techniques (i.e., mainly an Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average – ARIMA - model), which is ideal for analysing time series data. The model will be programmed in R and updated regularly thereafter.

Funder

Knowledge Exchange & Enterprise Network (KEEN).

News and Updates

The Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) launches their first industry forecast with a special look at BREXIT (1 April 2019). The report and the forecast model was part of a 10 months BCU KEEN-BMF project, led by Dr Erez  Yerushalmi (Senior Lecturer in Economics at BCU) and Nyssa Patel (BMF Economist). 

Click here to view the report cover & content (PDF).