IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/repdal/redp_226_0833.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Quelques constats sur les prévisions conjoncturelles de la croissance française

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Jobert
  • Lionel Persyn

Abstract

We study the quality of the French growth forecasts from the first decade of the century. An optimism bias of the quarterly Consensus growth forecasts can be asserted right from a graphic analysis and its existence is confirmed by the calculation of the mean errors which are systematically negative. The Theil index reveals that Insee forecasts are superior to the Consensus ones. In addition, the Consensus forecasts are superior to a naïve forecast. Proper tests seem to confirm that an optimism bias exists ; this bias could arise from the combination of several forecasts. The study of the Consensus Economics fixed event forecasts regarding the next coming year requires a preliminary analysis due to missing data. We thus only retain the forecasts of nine institutions that we compare to those of the Government, the IMF, the OECD, and the European Commission. It appears that the forecasts are fairly close to the Consensus forecast and that the optimism bias is still observable. Finally, the disagreement between the forecasters increases towards a recession and, then, decreases.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Jobert & Lionel Persyn, 2012. "Quelques constats sur les prévisions conjoncturelles de la croissance française," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 122(6), pages 833-849.
    • Handle: RePEc:cai:repdal:redp_226_0833
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REDP_226_0833
    Download Restriction: free
    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique-2012-6-page-833.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dopke, Jorg & Fritsche, Ulrich, 2006. "When do forecasters disagree? An assessment of German growth and inflation forecast dispersion," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 125-135.
    2. Jacob A. Mincer & Victor Zarnowitz, 1969. "The Evaluation of Economic Forecasts," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance, pages 3-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Dovern, Jonas & Weisser, Johannes, 2011. "Accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts: An empirical comparison for the G7," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 452-465.
    4. Bonham, Carl S & Cohen, Richard H, 2001. "To Aggregate, Pool, or Neither: Testing the Rational-Expectations Hypothesis Using Survey Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(3), pages 278-291, July.
    5. Timmermann, Allan & Patton, Andrew, 2003. "Properties of Optimal Forecasts," CEPR Discussion Papers 4037, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Allan Timmermann, 2007. "An Evaluation of the World Economic Outlook Forecasts," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 54(1), pages 1-33, May.
    7. Andrew Patton & Allan Timmermann, 2012. "Forecast Rationality Tests Based on Multi-Horizon Bounds," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 1-17.
    8. Batchelor, Roy, 2007. "Bias in macroeconomic forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 189-203.
    9. 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.
    10. Jonas Dovern & Ulrich Fritsche & Jiri Slacalek, 2012. "Disagreement Among Forecasters in G7 Countries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(4), pages 1081-1096, November.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/10077 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Catherine Doz, 1993. "Note sur les tests de rationalité des prévisions," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 108(2), pages 129-133.
    13. Ager, P. & Kappler, M. & Osterloh, S., 2009. "The accuracy and efficiency of the Consensus Forecasts: A further application and extension of the pooled approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 167-181.
    14. Davies, Anthony & Lahiri, Kajal, 1995. "A new framework for analyzing survey forecasts using three-dimensional panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 205-227, July.
    15. Roy Batchelor, 2007. "Forecaster Behaviour and Bias in Macroeconomic Forecasts," ifo Working Paper Series 39, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    16. Nordhaus, William D, 1987. "Forecasting Efficiency: Concepts and Applications," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(4), pages 667-674, November.
    17. Jean-Michel Charpin, 2010. "Statistiques : les voies de la confiance," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 61(3), pages 371-393.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dovern, Jonas & Weisser, Johannes, 2011. "Accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts: An empirical comparison for the G7," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 452-465.
    2. Dovern, Jonas & Fritsche, Ulrich & Loungani, Prakash & Tamirisa, Natalia, 2015. "Information rigidities: Comparing average and individual forecasts for a large international panel," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 144-154.
    3. Ager, P. & Kappler, M. & Osterloh, S., 2009. "The accuracy and efficiency of the Consensus Forecasts: A further application and extension of the pooled approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 167-181.
    4. Constantin Burgi, 2016. "What Do We Lose When We Average Expectations?," Working Papers 2016-013, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    5. Jonas Dovern & Mr. Ulrich Fritsche & Mr. Prakash Loungani & Ms. Natalia T. Tamirisa, 2013. "Information Rigidities in Economic Growth Forecasts: Evidence from a Large International Panel," IMF Working Papers 2013/056, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Bruno Deschamps & Christos Ioannidis, 2014. "The Efficiency of Multivariate Macroeconomic Forecasts," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82(5), pages 509-523, September.
    7. Papastamos, Dimitrios & Matysiak, George & Stevenson, Simon, 2015. "Assessing the accuracy and dispersion of real estate investment forecasts," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 141-152.
    8. Frenkel, Michael & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Zimmermann, Lilli, 2013. "Do private sector forecasters chase after IMF or OECD forecasts?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 217-229.
    9. Pedersen, Michael, 2015. "What affects the predictions of private forecasters? The role of central bank forecasts in Chile," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1043-1055.
    10. Loungani, Prakash & Stekler, Herman & Tamirisa, Natalia, 2013. "Information rigidity in growth forecasts: Some cross-country evidence," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 605-621.
    11. Pedersen, Michael, 2019. "Anomalies in macroeconomic prediction errors–evidence from Chilean private forecasters," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1100-1107.
    12. Aromí, J. Daniel, 2019. "Medium term growth forecasts: Experts vs. simple models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1085-1099.
    13. Philip Hans Franses, 2020. "Correcting the January optimism effect," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(6), pages 927-933, September.
    14. Dimitrios Papastamos & Fotis Mouzakis & Simon Stevenson, 2014. "Rationality and Momentum in Real Estate Investment Forecasts," Real Estate & Planning Working Papers rep-wp2014-07, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    15. Deschamps, Bruno & Ioannidis, Christos & Ka, Kook, 2020. "High-frequency credit spread information and macroeconomic forecast revision," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 358-372.
    16. 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.
    17. Clements, Michael P., 2021. "Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 634-646.
    18. Bruno Deschamps, 2015. "Are aggregate corporate earnings forecasts unbiased and efficient?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(4), pages 803-818, November.
    19. Dovern, Jonas & Weisser, Johannes, 2008. "Are they really rational? Assessing professional macro-economic forecasts from the G7-countries," Kiel Working Papers 1447, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    20. Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2008. "Evolution of forecast disagreement in a Bayesian learning model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 325-340, June.

    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:cai:repdal:redp_226_0833. 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: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique.htm .

    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.