Are Revisions to USDA Crop Production Forecasts Smoothed?

Olga Isengildina, Scott Irwin and Darrel L. Good

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2006, vol. 88, issue 4, 1091-1104

Abstract: This article uses Nordhaus' framework to determine the efficiency of the revision process for USDA corn and soybean production forecasts over the 1970/1971 through 2004/2005 marketing years. Positive autocorrelation and consistency of directional changes in forecast revisions suggest these forecasts are “smoothed.” Evidence is provided that the loss in forecast accuracy due to smoothing is statistically and economically significant in several cases. A conservative bias in farm operators' assessments of yield potential and in the procedure for translating enumerator's information about plant fruit counts into objective yield estimates are identified as plausible sources of smoothing. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-8276.2006.00918.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: ARE REVISIONS TO USDA CROP PRODUCTION FORECASTS SMOOTHED? (2004)
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:oup:ajagec:v:88:y:2006:i:4:p:1091-1104

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().