The Accuracy of USDA's Export Forecasts

Stephen MacDonald

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: USDA's quarterly forecasts of fiscal year agricultural exports by commodity and region were examined for their reliability in predicting annual changes during 1977-89. Most of the forecasts were strongly correlated with actual exports. Most obvious exceptions probably stemmed from rounding errors. Bias was not a problem for the forecasts of total exports in any quarter, nor for most of the commodity forecasts. There was some upward bias in the forecasts for less developed countries, and downward bias for some developed countries. The USDA forecasts were conservative; they were more likely to underestimate the magnitude of change than to overestimate it.

Keywords: Exports; fore casting; accuracy; export programs; commodities; high-value products (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 Q17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/71543/1/MPRA_paper_71543.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Accuracy of USDA's Export Forecasts (1992)
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:pra:mprapa:71543

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().