IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gwc/wpaper/2008-009.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Do We Know About G-7 Macro Forecasts?

Author

Listed:
  • Herman O. Stekler

    () (Department of Economics The George Washington University)

Abstract

Fildes and Stekler’s (2002) survey of the state of knowledge about the quality of economic forecasts focused primarily on US and UK data. This paper will draw on some of their findings but it will not examine any additional US forecasts. The purpose is to determine whether their results are robust by examining the predictions of other countries. The focus will be on (1) directional errors, (2) the magnitude of the errors made in estimating growth and inflation, (3) whether there were biases and systematic errors, (4) the sources of the errors and (5) whether there has been an improvement in forecasting ability.

Suggested Citation

  • Herman O. Stekler, 2008. "What Do We Know About G-7 Macro Forecasts?," Working Papers 2008-009, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    • Handle: RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2008-009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/2008-009.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2008
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Masahiro Ashiya, 2003. "The directional accuracy of 15-months-ahead forecasts made by the IMF," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(6), pages 331-333.
    2. Fildes, Robert & Stekler, Herman, 2002. "The state of macroeconomic forecasting," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 435-468, December.
    3. Batchelor, Roy, 2007. "Bias in macroeconomic forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 189-203.
    4. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & KennethF. Wallis, 2008. "Uncertainty and Disagreement in Economic Prediction: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 1107-1127, July.
    5. Michael P. Clements, 2004. "Evaluating the Bank of England Density Forecasts of Inflation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(498), pages 844-866, October.
    6. 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.
    7. Graham Elliott & Allan Timmermann, 2016. "Economic Forecasting," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10740, October.
    8. 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.
    9. Loungani, Prakash, 2001. "How accurate are private sector forecasts? Cross-country evidence from consensus forecasts of output growth," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 419-432.
    10. 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.
    11. Hall, Stephen G. & Mitchell, James, 2007. "Combining density forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-13.
    12. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Erratum to "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?"," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1849-1849, October.
    13. Öller, Lars-Erik & Barot, Bharat, 1999. "Comparing the Accuracy of European GDP Forecasts," Working Papers 64, National Institute of Economic Research.
    14. 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.
    15. Wallis, Kenneth F., 2003. "Chi-squared tests of interval and density forecasts, and the Bank of England's fan charts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 165-175.
    16. 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.
    17. Isiklar, Gultekin & Lahiri, Kajal, 2007. "How far ahead can we forecast? Evidence from cross-country surveys," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 167-187.
    18. Ashiya, Masahiro, 2006. "Forecast accuracy and product differentiation of Japanese Institutional Forecasters," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 395-401.
    19. 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.
    20. Carlos Bowles & Roberta Friz & Veronique Genre & Geoff Kenny & Aidan Meyler & Tuomas Rautanen, 2007. "The ECB survey of professional forecasters (SPF) – A review after eight years’ experience," Occasional Paper Series 59, European Central Bank.
    21. 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.
    22. Jörg Döpke & Ulrich Fritsche, 2006. "Growth and inflation forecasts for Germany a panel-based assessment of accuracy and efficiency," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 777-798, September.
    23. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    24. Ashiya, Masahiro, 2003. "Testing the rationality of Japanese GDP forecasts: the sign of forecast revision matters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 263-269, February.
    25. Lukas Vogel, 2007. "How do the OECD Growth Projections for the G7 Economies Perform?: A Post-Mortem," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 573, OECD Publishing.
    26. Jordi Pons, 2001. "The rationality of price forecasts: a directional analysis," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 287-290.
    27. Heilemann, Ullrich, 2002. "Increasing the transparency of macroeconometric forecasts: a report from the trenches," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 85-105.
    28. Bryan Campbell & Steve Murphy, 2006. "The Recent Performance of the Canadian Forecasting Industry," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 32(1), pages 23-40, March.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Ademmer, Martin & Boysen-Hogrefe, Jens & Fiedler, Salomon & Groll, Dominik & Jannsen, Nils & Kooths, Stefan & Potjagailo, Galina & Wolters, Maik H., 2017. "Deutsche Konjunktur im Herbst 2017 - Deutsche Wirtschaft nähert sich der Hochkonjunktur [German Economy Autumn 2017 - German economy approaches boom period]," Kieler Konjunkturberichte 35, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
    4. 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.
    5. Dovern, Jonas & Jannsen, Nils, 2017. "Systematische Prognosefehler in unterschiedlichen Konjunkturphasen," IfW-Box 2017.15, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    G7 forecasts; evaluation techniques;

    JEL classification:

    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:gwc:wpaper:2008-009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Tara M. Sinclair). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/pfgwuus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.