A Bayesian approach to developing a strategic early warning system for the French milk market

Abstract

A new approach is provided in our paper for creating a strategic early warningsystem allowing the estimation of the future state of the milk market as scenarios. This is inline with the recent call from the EU commission for tools that help to better address such ahighly volatile market. We applied different multivariate time series regression and Bayesiannetworks on a pre-determined map of relations between macro-economic indicators. Theevaluation of our findings with root mean square error (RMSE) performance score enhancesthe robustness of the prediction model constructed. Our model could be used by competitiveintelligence teams to obtain sharper scenarios, leading companies and public organisations tobetter anticipate market changes and make more robust decisions.