How did forecasters respond to the American growth slowdown since the mid-2000s?

Gabriel Mathy () and Daniel Kirwin

No 2017-02, Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Byrne et al. (2016) found that worldwide growth slowed down in the mid-2000s. This paper both confirms this result for the United States and looks at how forecasters responded to this slowdown in GDP growth. GDP is unambiguously and consistently below its forecasted level and so forecasts errors are persistently positive, consistent with a growth slowdown that is not forecasted in advance. In response to this slowdown, IMF and CBO forecasters adjusted their forecasts downwards while the Survey of Professional Forecasters made overoptimistic forecasts. We discuss the recent recession and its potential contribution to the current secular stagnation.

Keywords: Forecast errors; growth slowdown; secular stagnation; hysteresis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E17 E37 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.17606/e84t-0213 First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:amu:wpaper:2017-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from American University, Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Meal ().