IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v33y2001i2p225-235.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How useful are the forecasts of intergovernmental agencies? The IMF and OECD versus the consensus

Author

Listed:
  • Roy Batchelor

Abstract

This study compares the accuracy and information content of economic forecasts for G7 countries made in the 1990s by the OECD and IMF. The benchmarks for comparison are the average forecasts of private sector economists published by Consensus Economics. With few exceptions, the private sector forecasts are less biased and more accurate in terms of mean absolute error and root mean square error. Formal tests show these differences are statistically significant for forecasts of real growth and production, less so for forecasts of inflation and unemployment. Overall, there appears little information in the OECD and IMF forecasts that could be used to reduce significantly the error in the private sector forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy Batchelor, 2001. "How useful are the forecasts of intergovernmental agencies? The IMF and OECD versus the consensus," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 225-235.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:33:y:2001:i:2:p:225-235
    DOI: 10.1080/00036840121785
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840121785
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036840121785?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. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    2. Stekler, H. O., 1991. "Macroeconomic forecast evaluation techniques," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 375-384, November.
    3. Victor Zarnowitz & Phillip Braun, 1993. "Twenty-two Years of the NBER-ASA Quarterly Economic Outlook Surveys: Aspects and Comparisons of Forecasting Performance," NBER Chapters, in: Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting, pages 11-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    5. Ash, J. C. K. & Smyth, D. J. & Heravi, S. M., 1990. "The accuracy of OECD forecasts of the international economy : Demand, output and prices," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 379-392, October.
    6. Batchelor, Roy & Dua, Pami, 1991. "Blue Chip Rationality Tests," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(4), pages 692-705, November.
    7. White, Halbert, 1982. "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Misspecified Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 1-25, January.
    8. Ashley, R & Granger, C W J & Schmalensee, R, 1980. "Advertising and Aggregate Consumption: An Analysis of Causality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(5), pages 1149-1167, July.
    9. Clemen, Robert T., 1989. "Combining forecasts: A review and annotated bibliography," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 559-583.
    10. Ash, J. C. K. & Smyth, D. J. & Heravi, S. M., 1998. "Are OECD forecasts rational and useful?: a directional analysis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 381-391, September.
    11. McNees, Stephen K., 1989. "Forecasts and actuals: The trade-off between timeliness and accuracy," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 409-416.
    12. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    13. Roy Batchelor & Pami Dua, 1995. "Forecaster Diversity and the Benefits of Combining Forecasts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 68-75, January.
    14. Harvey, David & Leybourne, Stephen & Newbold, Paul, 1997. "Testing the equality of prediction mean squared errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 281-291, June.
    15. Batchelor, R A, 1990. "All Forecasters Are Equal," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 8(1), pages 143-144, January.
    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. repec:lan:wpaper:470 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:lan:wpaper:425 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:lan:wpaper:539557 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:lan:wpaper:413 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Fildes, Robert & Stekler, Herman, 2002. "The state of macroeconomic forecasting," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 435-468, December.
    6. Clark, Todd & McCracken, Michael, 2013. "Advances in Forecast Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1107-1201, Elsevier.
    7. Zidong An & Joao Tovar Jalles, 2020. "On the performance of US fiscal forecasts: government vs. private information," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 48(2), pages 367-391, June.
    8. Ullrich Heilemann & Herman Stekler, 2010. "Perspectives on Evaluating Macroeconomic Forecasts," Working Papers 2010-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    9. Hamid Baghestani, 2010. "Evaluating Blue Chip forecasts of the trade-weighted dollar exchange rate," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(24), pages 1879-1889.
    10. Parigi, Giuseppe & Golinelli, Roberto, 2005. "Short-Run Italian GDP Forecasting and Real-Time Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 5302, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. West, Kenneth D., 2006. "Forecast Evaluation," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 99-134, Elsevier.
    12. Rianne Legerstee & Philip Hans Franses, 2015. "Does Disagreement Amongst Forecasters Have Predictive Value?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(4), pages 290-302, July.
    13. Gavin, William T. & Mandal, Rachel J., 2003. "Evaluating FOMC forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 655-667.
    14. Baghestani, Hamid, 2010. "How well do experts predict interbank loan rates and spreads?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 4-6, October.
    15. Constantin Burgi, 2015. "Can A Subset Of Forecasters Beat The Simple Average In The Spf?," Working Papers 2015-001, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    16. McKnight, Stephen & Mihailov, Alexander & Rumler, Fabio, 2020. "Inflation forecasting using the New Keynesian Phillips Curve with a time-varying trend," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 383-393.
    17. Konstantinidi, Eirini & Skiadopoulos, George, 2011. "Are VIX futures prices predictable? An empirical investigation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 543-560, April.
    18. 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.
    19. Veress, Aron & Kaiser, Lars, 2017. "Forecasting quality of professionals: Does affiliation matter?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 159-168.
    20. Busetti, Fabio & Marcucci, Juri, 2013. "Comparing forecast accuracy: A Monte Carlo investigation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 13-27.
    21. Hamid Baghestani, 2011. "A directional analysis of Federal Reserve predictions of growth in unit labor costs and productivity," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 303-311.
    22. Li, Jia & Patton, Andrew J., 2018. "Asymptotic inference about predictive accuracy using high frequency data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 203(2), pages 223-240.
    23. Constantin Bürgi & Tara M. Sinclair, 2017. "A nonparametric approach to identifying a subset of forecasters that outperforms the simple average," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 101-115, August.
    24. Kappler, Marcus, 2007. "Projecting the Medium-Term: Outcomes and Errors for GDP Growth," ZEW Discussion Papers 07-068, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    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:taf:applec:v:33:y:2001:i:2:p:225-235. 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/RAEC20 .

    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.