MACROECONOMIC ASSESSMENT: CONTENT AND FEATURES OF APPLICATION IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE UKRAINIAN ECONOMY

Abstract

This article addresses the scientific problem of identifying macroeconomic assessment as one of the important areas of modern economic research. The development of this area ensures the adoption of more informed decisions in the formation and implementation of macroeconomic policy. The relevance of this area of research for the Ukrainian economy and society is also enhanced by significant imbalances and the danger of critical destabilization of the economy during the active phase of the war. The article explains the difference between macroeconomic assessment and macroeconomic analysis, and also emphasizes what unites them. Attention is drawn to the fact that macroeconomic assessment, to a greater extent, tends to the analysis of the "ex post" type. In contrast, macroeconomic analysis is, mainly, an analysis of the "ex ante" type. Both types of macroeconomic analysis are necessary and interrelated. Using a specific example of a model in which the influence of factors on GDP dynamics is assessed, a generalization is made about the content of macroeconomic assessment. It is proven that the "chaotic" selection of model predictors, that is, selection without using theoretical constructs of macroeconomic science, deprives econometric models of the ability to be the basis for predictions. The following methods were used in the study: comparison of theoretical and applied approaches in macroeconomic analysis and macroeconomic evaluation, system analysis, regression analysis. Generalizations were made regarding which of the tools provide the opportunity to achieve the best results in evaluating the economy in a state of high uncertainty. It is substantiated that such tools are macroeconomic evaluation based on vector autoregression (VAR) models, logistic regression models, artificial neural network models. It is the evaluation based on the mentioned tools that makes it possible to take into account the possibility of variability of events, the influence of unpredictable factors, and to take into account non-obvious (hidden) dependencies between macroeconomic variables.