Without accurate, timely and reliable information about what is actually happening, an episode of structural discontinuity may not be recognised as such until long after it first appears. These considerations do not imply, however, that structural forecasting models (i.e.
models in which the relations are not just a statistical reflection of the interaction between variables but are a quantitative representation, albeit approximate, of behavioural mechanisms) become completely unusable after a (real or apparent) break in their constituent relations.