IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/jlaare/122314.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comprehensive Evaluation of USDA Cotton Forecasts

Author

Listed:
  • Isengildina-Massa, Olga
  • MacDonald, Stephen
  • Xie, Ran

Abstract

This study evaluates all USDA cotton supply and demand estimates for the United States and China (including unpublished price forecasts) from 1985/86 through 2009/10 for accuracy and efficiency. Results reveal that at every stage of the forecasting cycle forecast smoothing was the most widespread and persistent type of inefficiency observed in most U.S. variables. Correlation with past errors indicated the tendency to repeat past errors in most cases. Tendency to overestimate growth was also found. Bias was uncommon and limited to several cases of overestimation of China’s exports and U.S. price and underestimation of China’s domestic use. While forecasts of China’s imports and endings stocks improved, U.S. price and ending stock forecast errors became larger toward the end of the study period.

Suggested Citation

  • Isengildina-Massa, Olga & MacDonald, Stephen & Xie, Ran, 2012. "A Comprehensive Evaluation of USDA Cotton Forecasts," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 37(01), pages 1-16, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:jlaare:122314
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.122314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/122314/files/Isengildina_%20pg.%2098-113.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.122314?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Henriksson, Roy D & Merton, Robert C, 1981. "On Market Timing and Investment Performance. II. Statistical Procedures for Evaluating Forecasting Skills," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 513-533, October.
    3. Isengildina-Massa, Olga & MacDonald, Stephen, 2009. "U.S. Cotton Prices and the World Cotton Market: Forecasting and Structural Change," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49324, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Isengildina-Massa, Olga & Irwin, Scott H. & Good, Darrel L. & Gomez, Jennifer K., 2008. "The Impact of Situation and Outlook Information in Corn and Soybean Futures Markets: Evidence from WASDE Reports," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(1), pages 89-103, April.
    5. Schnader, M H & Stekler, H O, 1990. "Evaluating Predictions of Change," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 99-107, January.
    6. repec:cup:jagaec:v:40:y:2008:i:1:p:89-103_6 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Falk, Barry L. & Orazem, Peter, 1989. "Measuring Market Responses to Error-Ridden Government Announcements," Staff General Research Papers Archive 11096, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    8. Christopher S. McIntosh & Jeffrey H. Dorfman, 1992. "Qualitative Forecast Evaluation: A Comparison of Two Performance Measures," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 74(1), pages 209-214.
    9. Jacob A. Mincer, 1969. "Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc69-1.
    10. Scott H. Irwin & Darrel L. Good, 2004. "Evaluation of USDA Interval Forecasts of Corn and Soybean Prices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(4), pages 990-1004.
    11. T. Randall Fortenbery & Daniel A. Sumner, 1993. "The effects of USDA reports in futures and options markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(2), pages 157-173, April.
    12. G. Gunnelson & W. D. Dobson & S. Pamperin, 1972. "Analysis of the Accuracy of USDA Crop Forecasts," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 54(4_Part_1), pages 639-645.
    13. Sanders, Dwight R. & Manfredo, Mark R., 2002. "Usda Production Forecasts For Pork, Beef, And Broilers: An Evaluation," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 27(01), pages 1-14, July.
    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. Bahram Sanginabadi, 2018. "USDA Forecasts: A meta-analysis study," Papers 1801.06575, arXiv.org.
    2. Qingjie Zhou & Panpan Zhu & You Wu & Yinpeng Zhang, 2022. "Research on the Volatility of the Cotton Market under Different Term Structures: Perspective from Investor Attention," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-20, November.
    3. MacDonald, Stephen & Isengildina-Massa, Olga, 2012. "Information Rigidity and Correcting Inefficiency in USDA’s Commodity Forecasts," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124890, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. McWilliams, William N. & Isengildina Massa, Olga & Stewart, Shamar L., 2024. "Annual Food Price Inflation Forecasting: A Macroeconomic Random Forest Approach," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 343923, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Kexin Ding & Ani L. Katchova, 2024. "Testing the optimality of USDA's WASDE forecasts under unknown loss," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 846-865, October.

    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:ags:jrapmc:122314 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Bespalova, Olga, 2018. "Forecast Evaluation in Macroeconomics and International Finance. Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA," MPRA Paper 117706, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Xiao, Jinzhi & Lence, Sergio H. & Hart, Chad, 2014. "Usda And Private Analysts' Forecasts Of Ending Stocks: How Good Are They?," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170642, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. 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.
    5. MacDonald, Stephen & Ash, Mark & Cooke, Bryce, 2017. "The Evolution of Inefficiency in USDA’s Forecasts of U.S. and World Soybean Markets," MPRA Paper 87545, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Baris Soybilgen & Ege Yazgan, 2017. "An evaluation of inflation expectations in Turkey," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 17(1), pages 1-31–38.
    7. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    8. Eicher, Theo S. & Kawai, Reina, 2023. "IMF trade forecasts for crisis countries: Bias, inefficiency, and their origins," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1615-1639.
    9. Sanders, Dwight R. & Manfredo, Mark R., 2003. "USDA Livestock Price Forecasts: A Comprehensive Evaluation," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 28(2), pages 1-19, August.
    10. Dorfmann, Jeffrey & Karali, Berna, 2015. "A Nonparametric Search for Information Effects from USDA Reports," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 40(01), pages 1-20.
    11. Kexin Ding & Ani L. Katchova, 2024. "Testing the optimality of USDA's WASDE forecasts under unknown loss," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 846-865, October.
    12. Bahram Sanginabadi, 2018. "USDA Forecasts: A meta-analysis study," Papers 1801.06575, arXiv.org.
    13. Tianyang Zhang & Ziran Li, 2022. "Can a rational expectation storage model explain the USDA ending grain stocks forecast errors?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(3), pages 313-337, March.
    14. repec:ags:aaea22:335690 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Eicher, Theo S. & Kuenzel, David J. & Papageorgiou, Chris & Christofides, Charis, 2019. "Forecasts in times of crises," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1143-1159.
    16. Botto, Augusto C. & Isengildina, Olga & Irwin, Scott H. & Good, Darrel L., 2006. "Accuracy Trends and Sources of Forecast Errors in WASDE Balance Sheet Categories for Corn and Soybeans," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21332, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    17. Berna Karali & Scott H. Irwin & Olga Isengildina‐Massa, 2020. "Supply Fundamentals and Grain Futures Price Movements," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(2), pages 548-568, March.
    18. Ericsson, Neil R., 2016. "Eliciting GDP forecasts from the FOMC’s minutes around the financial crisis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-583.
    19. Pascal Bührig & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2015. "Revisionen der deutschen Industrieproduktion und die ifo Indikatoren," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 68(21), pages 27-31, November.
    20. Barbara Rossi, 2013. "Exchange Rate Predictability," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1063-1119, December.
    21. Pericoli, Marcello & Taboga, Marco, 2012. "Bond risk premia, macroeconomic fundamentals and the exchange rate," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 42-65.
    22. Chang, Andrew C. & Hanson, Tyler J., 2016. "The accuracy of forecasts prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 23-43.

    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:ags:jlaare:122314. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/waeaaea.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.