IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/eureir/1693.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do we make better forecasts these days? A survey amongst academics

Author

Listed:
  • Franses, Ph.H.B.F.

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a survey held amongst all editorial board members of six journals. These journals in part focus on the development of models and methods for forecasting. The key question was whether one believes that the forecasting discipline has made progress in the last three decades. Amongst various results, the most important one is that modest progress has been made, although the profession seems far from satisfied. This progress appears to be mainly due to the increase in computing power and the fact that we are better able to incorporate important data features in our models. Additionally, progress could have been faster if we somehow were to include the opinions of experts. These last two findings define two important topics on the research agenda.

Suggested Citation

  • Franses, Ph.H.B.F., 2003. "Do we make better forecasts these days? A survey amongst academics," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 2003-06, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:ems:eureir:1693
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/1693/feweco20030220122808.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Granger, Clive W J, 1996. "Can We Improve the Perceived Quality of Economic Forecasts?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(5), pages 455-473, Sept.-Oct.
    2. Fildes, Robert & Stekler, Herman, 2002. "The state of macroeconomic forecasting," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 435-468, December.
    3. 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.
    4. Clements,Michael & Hendry,David, 1998. "Forecasting Economic Time Series," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521634809.
    5. Francis X. Diebold, 1998. "The Past, Present, and Future of Macroeconomic Forecasting," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 175-192, Spring.
    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. Philip Hans Franses, 2004. "Do We Think We Make Better Forecasts Than in the Past? A Survey of Academics," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 34(6), pages 466-468, December.

    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. Heilemann, Ullrich & Stekler, Herman, 2007. "Introduction to "The future of macroeconomic forecasting"," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 159-165.
    2. Heilemann, Ullrich & Stekler, H. O., 2003. "Has the accuracy of German macroeconomic forecasts improved?," Technical Reports 2003,31, Technische Universität Dortmund, Sonderforschungsbereich 475: Komplexitätsreduktion in multivariaten Datenstrukturen.
    3. Christopher F. Baum & John Barkoulas, 2006. "Long-memory forecasting of US monetary indices," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 291-302.
    4. Lahiri, Kajal & Wang, J. George, 2013. "Evaluating probability forecasts for GDP declines using alternative methodologies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 175-190.
    5. Guillaume Chevillon, 2007. "Direct Multi‐Step Estimation And Forecasting," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 746-785, September.
    6. Gultekin Isiklar & Kajal Lahiri & Prakash Loungani, 2006. "How quickly do forecasters incorporate news? Evidence from cross‐country surveys," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 703-725, September.
    7. Oller, Lars-Erik & Barot, Bharat, 2000. "The accuracy of European growth and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 293-315.
    8. Stekler, H.O., 2007. "The future of macroeconomic forecasting: Understanding the forecasting process," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 237-248.
    9. Gerit Vogt, 2009. "Konjunkturprognose in Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zur Prognose der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung auf Bundes- und Länderebene," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 36.
    10. Jakab M., Zoltán & Kovács, Mihály András & Kiss, Gergely, 2006. "Mit tanultunk?. A jegybanki előrejelzések szerepe az inflációs cél követésének első öt évében Magyarországon [What are we studying?. The role of central-bank forecasts in Hungarian inflation target," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(12), pages 1101-1134.
    11. Barot, Bharat, 2007. "Empirical Studies in Consumption, House Prices and the Accuracy of European Growth and Inflation Forecasts," Working Papers 98, National Institute of Economic Research.
    12. Vuchelen, Jef & Gutierrez, Maria-Isabel, 2005. "A direct test of the information content of the OECD growth forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 103-117.
    13. Brandt, Patrick T. & Freeman, John R. & Schrodt, Philip A., 2014. "Evaluating forecasts of political conflict dynamics," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 944-962.
    14. 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.
    15. Hendry, David F. & Clements, Michael P., 2003. "Economic forecasting: some lessons from recent research," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-329, March.
    16. Rostami-Tabar, Bahman & Ali, Mohammad M. & Hong, Tao & Hyndman, Rob J. & Porter, Michael D. & Syntetos, Aris, 2022. "Forecasting for social good," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1245-1257.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. Leitner, Johannes & Leopold-Wildburger, Ulrike, 2011. "Experiments on forecasting behavior with several sources of information - A review of the literature," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 213(3), pages 459-469, September.
    20. Döpke, Jörg & Fritsche, Ulrich & Müller, Karsten, 2019. "Has macroeconomic forecasting changed after the Great Recession? Panel-based evidence on forecast accuracy and forecaster behavior from Germany," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

    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:ems:eureir:1693. 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: RePub (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feeurnl.html .

    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.