IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/challe/v57y2014i6p34-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Failure of Forecasts in the Great Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Culbertson
  • Tara Sinclair

Abstract

Macroeconomic forecasts are used to make decisions by everyone from business leaders to government policymakers. But the forecasts they rely on are most flawed just when they are most needed. The authors present an analysis of the accuracy of forecasts, focusing specifically on the latest recession in the United States. It is fair to conclude that economists completely failed to anticipate the fall in GDP and employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Culbertson & Tara Sinclair, 2014. "The Failure of Forecasts in the Great Recession," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(6), pages 34-45.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:challe:v:57:y:2014:i:6:p:34-45
    DOI: 10.2753/0577-5132570603
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/0577-5132570603
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2753/0577-5132570603?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fildes, Robert & Stekler, Herman, 2002. "The state of macroeconomic forecasting," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 435-468, December.
    2. Karen E. Dynan & Douglas W. Elmendorf, 2001. "Do provisional estimates of output miss economic turning points?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-52, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Swanson, Norman R. & van Dijk, Dick, 2006. "Are Statistical Reporting Agencies Getting It Right? Data Rationality and Business Cycle Asymmetry," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 24, pages 24-42, January.
    4. Sinclair, Tara M. & Joutz, Fred & Stekler, H.O., 2010. "Can the Fed predict the state of the economy?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 28-32, July.
    5. Fildes, Robert & Stekler, Herman, 2002. "Reply to the comments on 'The state of macroeconomic forecasting'," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 503-505, December.
    6. Hyunyoung Choi & Hal Varian, 2012. "Predicting the Present with Google Trends," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 2-9, June.
    7. Nicholas Haltom & Vanessa D. Mitchell & Ellis W. Tallman, 2005. "Payroll employment data: measuring the effects of annual benchmark revisions," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 90(Q 2), pages 1-23.
    8. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2008. "The FOMC versus the Staff: Where Can Monetary Policymakers Add Value?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 230-235, May.
    9. Gamber, Edward N. & Smith, Julie K., 2009. "Are the Fed's inflation forecasts still superior to the private sector's?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 240-251, June.
    10. Herman O. Stekler & Raj M. Talwar, 2011. "Economic Forecasting in the Great Recession," Working Papers 2011-005, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    11. Victor Zarnowitz, 1986. "The Record and Improvability of Economic Forecasting," NBER Working Papers 2099, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. J. Steven Landefeld & Eugene P. Seskin & Barbara M. Fraumeni, 2008. "Taking the Pulse of the Economy: Measuring GDP," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 193-216, Spring.
    13. Ricardo Nunes, 2013. "Do central banks’ forecasts take into account public opinion and views?," International Finance Discussion Papers 1080, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Christopher A. Sims, 2002. "The Role of Models and Probabilities in the Monetary Policy Process," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 1-62.
    15. Stekler, H O, 1972. "An Analysis of Turning Point Forecasts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 724-729, September.
    16. Herman O. Stekler & Hilary Symington, 2014. "How Did The Fomc View The Great Recession As It Was Happening?: Evaluating The Minutes From Fomc Meetings, 2006-2010," Working Papers 2014-005, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    17. David H. Romer & Christina D. Romer, 2000. "Federal Reserve Information and the Behavior of Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 429-457, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abdalla, Ahmed & Carabias, Jose M. & Patatoukas, Panos N., 2021. "The real-time macro content of corporate financial reports: a dynamic factor model approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108539, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Michael D. Hunter & Haya Fatimah & Marina A. Bornovalova, 2022. "Two Filtering Methods of Forecasting Linear and Nonlinear Dynamics of Intensive Longitudinal Data," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 87(2), pages 477-505, June.
    3. Abdalla, Ahmed M. & Carabias, Jose M. & Patatoukas, Panos N., 2021. "The real-time macro content of corporate financial reports: A dynamic factor model approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 260-280.
    4. Thomas L. Hogan, 2022. "The calculus of dissent: Bias and diversity in FOMC projections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 105-135, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Messina, Jeffrey D. & Sinclair, Tara M. & Stekler, Herman, 2015. "What can we learn from revisions to the Greenbook forecasts?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 54-62.
    2. Ericsson, Neil R., 2017. "How biased are U.S. government forecasts of the federal debt?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 543-559.
    3. Ericsson, Neil R., 2016. "Eliciting GDP forecasts from the FOMC’s minutes around the financial crisis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-583.
    4. Tara M. Sinclair & Fred Joutz & Herman O. Stekler, 2008. "Are 'unbiased' forecasts really unbiased? Another look at the Fed forecasts," Working Papers 2008-010, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    5. Henning Fischer & Marta García-Bárzana & Peter Tillmann & Peter Winker, 2014. "Evaluating FOMC forecast ranges: an interval data approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 365-388, August.
    6. El-Shagi, Makram & Giesen, Sebastian & Jung, Alexander, 2016. "Revisiting the relative forecast performances of Fed staff and private forecasters: A dynamic approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 313-323.
    7. Stekler, Herman & Symington, Hilary, 2016. "Evaluating qualitative forecasts: The FOMC minutes, 2006–2010," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 559-570.
    8. Dovern, Jonas & Jannsen, Nils, 2017. "Systematic errors in growth expectations over the business cycle," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 760-769.
    9. Paul Hubert, 2015. "Revisiting the Greenbook’s relative forecasting performance," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(1), pages 151-179.
    10. Jung, Alexander & El-Shagi, Makram & Giesen, Sebastian, 2014. "Does the federal reserve staff still beat private forecasters?," Working Paper Series 1635, European Central Bank.
    11. Stekler, H.O., 2007. "The future of macroeconomic forecasting: Understanding the forecasting process," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 237-248.
    12. Bespalova, Olga, 2020. "GDP forecasts: Informational asymmetry of the SPF and FOMC minutes," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1531-1540.
    13. Pao‐Lin Tien & Tara M. Sinclair & Edward N. Gamber, 2021. "Do Fed Forecast Errors Matter?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(3), pages 686-712, June.
    14. Gamber, Edward N. & Liebner, Jeffrey P. & Smith, Julie K., 2015. "The distribution of inflation forecast errors," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 47-64.
    15. Sergey V. Smirnov & Daria A. Avdeeva, 2016. "Wishful Bias in Predicting Us Recessions: Indirect Evidence," HSE Working papers WP BRP 135/EC/2016, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    16. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3pot7260lh88lrfhrhvs85lh2f is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Paul Hubert, 2015. "Do Central Bank Forecasts Influence Private Agents? Forecasting Performance versus Signals," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(4), pages 771-789, June.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3pot7260lh88lrfhrhvs85lh2f is not listed on IDEAS
    19. El-Shagi, Makram & Giesen, Sebastian & Jung, Alexander, 2012. "Does Central Bank Staff Beat Private Forecasters?," IWH Discussion Papers 5/2012, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    20. Herman O. Stekler & Hilary Symington, 2014. "How Did The Fomc View The Great Recession As It Was Happening?: Evaluating The Minutes From Fomc Meetings, 2006-2010," Working Papers 2014-005, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    21. Xie, Zixiong & Hsu, Shih-Hsun, 2016. "Time varying biases and the state of the economy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 716-725.
    22. Castle, Jennifer L. & Clements, Michael P. & Hendry, David F., 2015. "Robust approaches to forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 99-112.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:challe:v:57:y:2014:i:6:p:34-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MCHA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.