Preface — special issue on complex data processing methods and their applications to economic systems

This special issue of Journal of Systems Science & Complexity (JSSC) includes 16 papers selected from the 1st International Conference on Forecasting Economic & Financial Systems (FEFS-2012) and the 5th International Workshop on Singular Spectrum Analysis & its Applications (SSA-2012), held in Beijing, China, May 17–20, 2012. The theme of the special issue is dedicated to new developments in the theory and methodology of complex data processing methods and exciting applications to economic and financial forecasting. For this purpose, 16 papers of the high quality were selected from 12 invited talks and 99 submissions. All selected papers went through the standard review process of the journal and the authors of some papers made necessary revision in terms of review comments. The selected papers include, “A Self-Similar Local Neuro-Fuzzy Model for Short-Term Demand Forecasting” By HASSANI Hossein, ABDOLLAHZADEH Majid, IRANMANESH Hossein, and MIRANIAN Arash, “Forecasting Exchange Rate: An Optimal Approach” by BENEKI Christina and YARMOHAMMADI Masoud, “Combining Singular Spectrum Analysis and Par(P ) Structures to Model Wind Speed Time Series” By MENEZES Moises Lima de, SOUZA Reinaldo Castro, and PESSANHA Jose Francisco Moreira, “Exchange Rate Forecasting with Optimum Singular Spectrum Analysis” by GHODSI Mansoureh and YARMOHAMMADI Masoud, “Estimating Multi-Country Prosperity Index: A Two-dimensional Singular Spectrum Analysis Approach” by ZHANG Jiawei, HASSANI Hossein, XIE Haibin, and ZHANG Xun, “Cluster-Based Regularized Sliced Inverse Regression for Forecasting Macroeconomic Variables” by YU Yue, CHEN Zhihong, and YANG Jie, “Information Identification in Different Networks with Heterogeneous Information Sources” by FENG Xu, ZHANG Wei, ZHANG Yongjie, and XIONG Xiong, “Forecasting Time Series with Genetic Programming Based on Least Square Method”