Accuracy, Unbiasedness and Efficiency of Professional Macroeconomic Forecasts: An empirical Comparison for the G7

Jonas Dovern and Johannes Weisser ()
Additional contact information
Johannes Weisser: Max Planck Institute for Economics, Jena

No 2009-091, Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

Abstract: In this paper, we use survey data to analyze the accuracy, unbiasedness, and the efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts. We analyze a large panel of individual forecasts that has not been analyzed in the literature so far. We provide evidence on the properties of forecasts for all G7 counties and for four diffierent macroeconomic variables. Our results show a high degree of dispersion of forecast accuracy across forecasters. We also find that there are large diffierences in the performance of forecasters not only across countries but also across diffierent macroeconomic variables. In general, forecasts tend to be biased in situations where forecasters have to respond to large structural shocks or gradual changes in the trend of a variable. Furthermore, while a sizable fraction of forecasters seem to smooth their GDP forecasts significantly, this does not apply to forecasts made for other macroeconomic variables.

Keywords: Evaluating forecasts; Macroeconomic Forecasting; Rationality; Survey Data; Fixed-Event Forecasts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 E32 E37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-11-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2009/wp_2009_091.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts: An empirical comparison for the G7 (2011)
Journal Article: Accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts: An empirical comparison for the G7 (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-091

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Markus Pasche ().