This paper reviews the practice and performance of revenue forecasting in selected OECD countries. While the mean forecast errors are small in most countries, the precision of the forecasts measured by the standard deviation of the forecast error differs substantially across countries. Based on a comparison of forecasting practices we show that these differences can be attributed to a large part to differences in the timing of the forecasts and in the tax structure. In addition, we find some evidence that differences in methods and institutions also matter for the forecasting precision. In particular, we find that the use of macroeconomic models as well as the independence of revenue forecasting are associated with a lower standard deviation of the forecast error.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2628.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government H68 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Forecasts of Budgets, Deficits, and Debt
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: