IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wzbmbh/spii2019212.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What point of a distribution summarises point predictions?

Author

Listed:
  • Kröger, Sabine
  • Pierrot, Thibaud

Abstract

In this article, we study the point predictions that forecasters report when they are asked to predict the realisation of an iid random variable. We set up a laboratory experiment where the participants act as forecasters predicting the next realisation of random draws coming from different "objectively known" distributions which vary in the location of their central tendencies. As is standard in survey measures, the subjects in our experiment must report their best guess of the next draw as a forecast. We find that most of the forecasters report point predictions that are close to one of the three main central tendencies (mean, median or mode) of the distributions provided, with a majority corresponding to the mode. Our analysis also shows that when selecting a point prediction, people have in mind a numerical value (e.g. the mean or the mode) rather than a specific percentile of the underlying distribution. Only 5% of the forecasts reported during the experiment are based on a percentile while almost 60% are based on a numerical value.

Suggested Citation

  • Kröger, Sabine & Pierrot, Thibaud, 2019. "What point of a distribution summarises point predictions?," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2019-212, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2019212
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/206533/1/1680857673.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles F. Manski, 2004. "Measuring Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1329-1376, September.
    2. Manski, Charles F., 2002. "Identification of decision rules in experiments on simple games of proposal and response," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 880-891, May.
    3. Graham Elliott & Ivana Komunjer & Allan Timmermann, 2008. "Biases in Macroeconomic Forecasts: Irrationality or Asymmetric Loss?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 122-157, March.
    4. Das, J.W.M. & Dominitz, J. & van Soest, A.H.O., 1997. "Comparing Predictions and Outcomes : Theory and Application to Income Changes," Other publications TiSEM 6eef11dd-0ae4-4673-b8c0-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    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. Crosetto, Paolo & de Haan, Thomas, 2023. "Comparing input interfaces to elicit belief distributions," Judgment and Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18, pages 1-1, January.
    2. Timo Dimitriadis & Andrew J. Patton & Patrick W. Schmidt, 2019. "Testing Forecast Rationality for Measures of Central Tendency," Papers 1910.12545, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.

    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. Armantier, Olivier & Treich, Nicolas, 2013. "Eliciting beliefs: Proper scoring rules, incentives, stakes and hedging," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 17-40.
    2. Hugo Benítez-Silva & Debra Dwyer & Wayne-Roy Gayle & Thomas Muench, 2008. "Expectations in micro data: rationality revisited," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 381-416, March.
    3. Kyle Hyndman & Antoine Terracol & Jonathan Vaksmann, 2022. "Beliefs and (in)stability in normal-form games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(4), pages 1146-1172, September.
    4. Manski, Charles F. & Neri, Claudia, 2013. "First- and second-order subjective expectations in strategic decision-making: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 232-254.
    5. Adeline Delavande, 2008. "Measuring revisions to subjective expectations," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 43-82, February.
    6. Hoderlein, Stefan & Winter, Joachim, 2010. "Structural measurement errors in nonseparable models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 157(2), pages 432-440, August.
    7. Claudia Neri, 2015. "Eliciting beliefs in continuous-choice games: a double auction experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 569-608, December.
    8. Massenot, Baptiste & Pettinicchi, Yuri, 2018. "Can firms see into the future? Survey evidence from Germany," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 66-79.
    9. Sarah Brown & Mark N. Harris & Christopher Spencer & Karl Taylor, 2020. "Financial Expectations and Household Consumption: Does Middle Inflation Matter?," Working Papers 2020002, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    10. Luc Bissonnette & Arthur van Soest, 2012. "The future of retirement and the pension system: How the public’s expectations vary over time and across socio-economic groups," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, December.
    11. Bao, Te & Duffy, John & Hommes, Cars, 2013. "Learning, forecasting and optimizing: An experimental study," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 186-204.
    12. Basit Zafar, 2012. "Double Majors: One For Me, One For The Parents?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(2), pages 287-308, April.
    13. Cherchye, Laurens & Demuynck, Thomas & De Rock, Bram & Freer, Mikhail, 2022. "Revealed preference analysis of expected utility maximization under prize-probability trade-offs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    14. Massenot, Baptiste & Pettinicchi, Yuri, 2019. "Can households see into the future? Survey evidence from the Netherlands," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 77-90.
    15. Matthew Wiswall & Basit Zafar, 2015. "Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification using an Information Experiment," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 82(2), pages 791-824.
    16. Arns, Jürgen & Bhattacharya, Kaushik, 2005. "Modelling Aggregate Consumption Growth with Time-Varying Parameters," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 15/2005, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    17. Charles F. Manski, 2018. "Survey Measurement of Probabilistic Macroeconomic Expectations: Progress and Promise," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 411-471.
    18. Federica Alberti & Anna Conte & Kei Tsutsui, 2014. "Accuracy of proposers' beliefs in an allocation-type game," Jena Economics Research Papers 2014-002, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    19. Mauro Mastrogiacomo, 2010. "Testing Consumers' Asymmetric Perception Of Changes In Household Financial Situation," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(2), pages 327-350, June.
    20. Moshe Ben-Akiva & André Palma & Daniel McFadden & Maya Abou-Zeid & Pierre-André Chiappori & Matthieu Lapparent & Steven Durlauf & Mogens Fosgerau & Daisuke Fukuda & Stephane Hess & Charles Manski & Ar, 2012. "Process and context in choice models," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 439-456, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    subjective expectations; forecasting; eliciting point predictions; experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2019212. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vawzbde.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.