The Accuracy of Business Week's Industry Outlook Survey

Steven P. Schnaars and Iris Mohr
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Steven P. Schnaars: Baruch College, The City University of New York, 17 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Iris Mohr: Baruch College, The City University of New York, 17 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Interfaces, 1988, vol. 18, issue 5, 31-38

Abstract: How good is the Business Week industry outlook survey? We evaluated the accuracy of this survey since it was first published as a cover story in 1978. We examined whether these surveys are truly able to foresee the future, as the magazine claims, or whether they merely make for entertaining reading. Our study also offers fresh evidence on the value of judgmental forecasts. Our findings indicate that 80 percent of the outlooks correctly foresaw the general direction in which an industry was headed in the coming year. Furthermore, for every one of the five industries examined, specific forecasts contained in the outlooks were, on average, more accurate than those produced by a naive benchmark.

Keywords: forecasting:; applications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:18:y:1988:i:5:p:31-38

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