A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE ON THE DISAGGREGATION OF TIME SERIES TOTALS

Abstract. This paper sheds new light on a generalized least squares approach for disaggregating a series of time series totals to estimate an underlying unaggregated series. By reinterpreting the generalized least squares problem as a time series prediction problem we can produce considerable computational savings relative to standard least squares approaches. Our reinterpretation gives us insight into the nature of the matrices which need to be inverted to compute the disaggregates.