Disagreement Among Forecasters in G7 Countries

Jonas Dovern, Ulrich Fritsche and Jiri Slacalek

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2012, vol. 94, issue 4, 1081-1096

Abstract: We investigate determinants of disagreement—cross-sectional dispersion of individual forecasts—about key economic indicators. Disagreement about economic activity, in particular about GDP growth, has a distinct dynamic from disagreement about prices: inflation and interest rates. Disagreement about GDP growth intensifies strongly during recessions. Disagreement about prices rises with their level, declines under independent central banks, and both its level and its sensitivity to macroeconomic variables are larger in countries where central banks became independent only around the mid-1990s. Our findings suggest that credible monetary policy contributes to anchoring of expectations about inflation and interest rates. Disagreement for both groups of indicators increases with uncertainty about the actual series. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Keywords: disagreement; survey expectations; monetary policy; forecasting; G7 countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 E31 E32 E37 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (332)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00207 link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Disagreement among forecasters in G7 countries (2009)
Working Paper: Disagreement among Forecasters in G7 Countries (2009)
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:tpr:restat:v:94:y:2012:i:4:p:1081-1096

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().