EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts

Michael Clements

International Journal of Forecasting, 2021, vol. 37, issue 2, 634-646

Abstract: If ‘learning by doing’ is important for macro-forecasting, newcomers might be different from regular, established participants. Stayers may also differ from the soon-to-leave. We test these conjectures for macro-forecasters’ point predictions of output growth and inflation, and for their histogram forecasts. Histogram forecasts of inflation by both joiners and leavers are found to be less accurate, especially if we suppose that joiners take time to learn. For GDP growth, there is no evidence of differences between the groups in terms of histogram forecast accuracy, although GDP point forecasts by leavers are less accurate. These findings are predicated on forecasters being homogeneous within groups. Allowing for individual fixed effects suggests fewer differences, including leavers’ inflation histogram forecasts being no less accurate.

Keywords: Forecast accuracy; Experience; Learning by doing; Probability forecasts; Growth forecasts; Inflation forecasts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207020301187
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Survey Joiners and Leavers Differ from Regular Participants? The US SPF GDP Growth and Inflation Forecasts (2020) Downloads
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:eee:intfor:v:37:y:2021:i:2:p:634-646

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2020.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Forecasting is currently edited by R. J. Hyndman

More articles in International Journal of Forecasting from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:37:y:2021:i:2:p:634-646