IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cep/poidwp/023.html

Do well managed firms make better forecasts?

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Bloom
  • Takafumi Kawakubo
  • Charlotte Meng
  • Paul Mizen
  • Rebecca Riley
  • Tatsuro Senga
  • John Van Reenen

Abstract

We link a new UK management survey covering 8,000 firms to panel data on productivity in manufacturing and services. There is a large variation in management practices, which are highly correlated with productivity, profitability and size. Uniquely, the survey collects firms' micro forecasts of their own sales and also macro forecasts of GDP. We find that better managed firms make more accurate micro and macro forecasts, even after controlling for their size, age, industry and many other factors. We also show better managed firms appear aware that their forecasts are more accurate, with lower subjective uncertainty around central values. These stylized facts suggest that one reason for the superior performance of better managed firms is that they knowingly make more accurate forecasts, enabling them to make superior operational and strategic choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Bloom & Takafumi Kawakubo & Charlotte Meng & Paul Mizen & Rebecca Riley & Tatsuro Senga & John Van Reenen, 2022. "Do well managed firms make better forecasts?," POID Working Papers 023, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:poidwp:023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bilicka, Katarzyna & Scur, Daniela, 2024. "Organizational capacity and profit shifting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    2. Alexandros Botsis & Christoph Gortz & Plutarchos Sakellaris, 2024. "Quantifying Qualitative Survey Data with Panel Data Structure," CAMA Working Papers 2024-21, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    3. Agnes Norris Keiller & Áureo de Paula & John Van Reenen, 2024. "Production function estimation using subjective expectations data," IFS Working Papers WCWP15/24, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    4. Botsis, Alexandros & Görtz, Christoph & Sakellaris, Plutarchos, 2024. "Quantifying qualitative survey data with panel data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    5. Chen, Ying & Kimura, Yosuke & Inoue, Kotaro, 2025. "How does managerial perception of uncertainty affect corporate investment during the COVID-19 pandemic: A text mining approach," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    6. Imani, Yusuke & Ohyama, Atsushi, 2022. "The Roles of Structured Management in the Formation of Transactional Relationships," TDB-CAREE Discussion Paper Series E-2021-07, Teikoku Databank Center for Advanced Empirical Research on Enterprise and Economy, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    7. Alexandros Botsis & Christoph Görtz & Plutarchos Sakellaris, 2020. "Quantifying Qualitative Survey Data: New Insights on the (Ir)Rationality of Firms' Forecasts," CESifo Working Paper Series 8148, CESifo.
    8. Norris Keiller, Agnes & de Paula, Aureo & Van Reenen, John, 2024. "Production function estimation using subjective expectations data," CEPR Discussion Papers 19259, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Mancini, Anna Laura & Tommasino, Pietro, 2023. "Fiscal rules and the reliability of public investment plans: Evidence from local governments," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    10. Chen, Cheng & Senga, Tatsuro & Sun, Chang & Zhang, Hongyong, 2023. "Uncertainty, imperfect information, and expectation formation over the firm’s life cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 60-77.
    11. Petre Caraiani & Nazli Karamollaoglu & Cihan Yalcin, 2025. "Financial Conditions, Uncertainty and Expectations Errors of Firms," Working Papers 2515, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    12. Joel Suss & Adam Hughes, 2023. "Bank expectations and prudential outcomes," Bank of England working papers 1035, Bank of England.
    13. Binz, Oliver & Ferracuti, Elia & Joos, Peter, 2023. "Investment, inflation, and the role of internal information systems as a transmission channel," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
    • M2 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    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:cep:poidwp:023. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://poid.lse.ac.uk/publications/working-papers/ .

    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.