IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecmode/v100y2021ics0264999321001127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do forecasters really care about consensus?

Author

Listed:
  • Goldstein, Nathan
  • Zilberfarb, Ben-Zion

Abstract

The way expectations are formed is a crucial economic issue, far from being resolved. Strategic response of forecasters to the consensus belief can explain key features of expectations formation documented in survey data. However, empirical evidence for such a response could be criticized on the basis of the underlying informational assumptions. This study exploits a special design, in an Israeli survey of firm-level inflation forecasts, which controls the information about consensus reported to the participants. We find a significant tendency of anti-herding, which is also related to the inflation level. As the inflation rate decreases, the tendency to anti-herd diminishes. This may suggest that a greater attention to inflation is associated with over-response to consensus.

Suggested Citation

  • Goldstein, Nathan & Zilberfarb, Ben-Zion, 2021. "Do forecasters really care about consensus?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:100:y:2021:i:c:s0264999321001127
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2021.105523
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999321001127
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econmod.2021.105523?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. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "The strategy of professional forecasting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 441-466, August.
    2. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar, 2018. "How Do Firms Form Their Expectations? New Survey Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2671-2713, September.
    3. George-Marios Angeletos & Zhen Huo & Karthik A. Sastry, 2021. "Imperfect Macroeconomic Expectations: Evidence and Theory," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 1-86.
    4. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Yueran Ma & Andrei Shleifer, 2020. "Overreaction in Macroeconomic Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2748-2782, September.
    5. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "What Can Survey Forecasts Tell Us about Information Rigidities?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(1), pages 116-159.
    6. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Weale, Martin, 2006. "Survey Expectations," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 715-776, Elsevier.
    7. Michael P. Clements, 2018. "Do Macroforecasters Herd?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(2-3), pages 265-292, March.
    8. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    9. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.
    10. Eugene Kandel & Ben-Zion Zilberfarb, 1999. "Differential Interpretation Of Information In Inflation Forecasts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(2), pages 217-226, May.
    11. Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Tillmann, Peter, 2011. "Do FOMC members herd?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 176-179.
    12. 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.
    13. Fritsche, Ulrich & Pierdzioch, Christian & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2015. "Forecasting the Brazilian real and the Mexican peso: Asymmetric loss, forecast rationality, and forecaster herding," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 130-139.
    14. Joscha Beckmann & Robert L. Czudaj, 2018. "Monetary Policy Shocks, Expectations, And Information Rigidities," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(4), pages 2158-2176, October.
    15. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Tiziano Ropele, 2020. "Inflation Expectations and Firm Decisions: New Causal Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(1), pages 165-219.
    16. Lamont, Owen A., 2002. "Macroeconomic forecasts and microeconomic forecasters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 265-280, July.
    17. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Saten Kumar & Jane Ryngaert, 2021. "Do You Know that I Know that You Know…? Higher-Order Beliefs in Survey Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(3), pages 1387-1446.
    18. 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.
    19. Tom Stark, 1997. "Macroeconomic forecasts and microeconomic forecasters in the Survey of Professional Forecasters," Working Papers 97-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    20. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    21. Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Silgoner, Maria & Wörz, Julia, 2016. "Herding behavior of business cycle forecasters," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 23-33.
    22. David Laster & Paul Bennett & In Sun Geoum, 1999. "Rational Bias in Macroeconomic Forecasts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 293-318.
    23. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Information Rigidity and the Expectations Formation Process: A Simple Framework and New Facts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2644-2678, August.
    24. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Rupal Kamdar, 2018. "The Formation of Expectations, Inflation, and the Phillips Curve," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1447-1491, December.
    25. Nakazono, Yoshiyuki, 2013. "Strategic behavior of Federal Open Market Committee board members: Evidence from members’ forecasts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 62-70.
    26. Michael P. Clements, 2015. "Do US Macroeconomic Forecasters Exaggerate their Differences?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(8), pages 649-660, December.
    27. Tilman Ehrbeck & Robert Waldmann, 1996. "Why Are Professional Forecasters Biased? Agency versus Behavioral Explanations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 21-40.
    28. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 2018. "Intrinsic expectations persistence: evidence from professional and household survey expectations," Working Papers 18-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    29. Goldstein, Nathan & Zilberfarb, Ben-Zion, 2017. "Rationality and seasonality: Evidence from inflation forecasts," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 86-90.
    30. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    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. An, Zidong & Zheng, Xinye, 2023. "Diligent forecasters can make accurate predictions despite disagreeing with the consensus," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    2. Radi, Sherrihan & Gebka, Bartosz & Kallinterakis, Vasileios, 2024. "The wisdom of the madness of crowds: Investor herding, anti-herding, and stock-bond return correlation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 966-995.
    3. Toshitaka Sekine & Frank Packer & Shunichi Yoneyama, 2022. "Individual Trend Inflation," IMES Discussion Paper Series 22-E-14, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.

    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. Candia, Bernardo & Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy, 2024. "The inflation expectations of U.S. firms: Evidence from a new survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(S).
    2. Andrade, Philippe & Gautier, Erwan & Mengus, Eric, 2023. "What matters in households’ inflation expectations?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 50-68.
    3. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2023. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    4. Cole, Stephen J. & Milani, Fabio, 2021. "Heterogeneity in individual expectations, sentiment, and constant-gain learning," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 627-650.
    5. Nathan Goldstein & Ben‐Zion Zilberfarb, 2023. "The closer we get, the better we are?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(2), pages 364-376, April.
    6. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2020. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," BERG Working Paper Series 163, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    7. 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.
    8. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    9. Han, Zhao, 2024. "Asymmetric information and misaligned inflation expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    10. Cornand, Camille & Hubert, Paul, 2022. "Information frictions across various types of inflation expectations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    11. Chini, Emilio Zanetti, 2023. "Can we estimate macroforecasters’ mis-behavior?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    12. Artūras Juodis & Simas Kučinskas, 2023. "Quantifying noise in survey expectations," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(2), pages 609-650, May.
    13. Michael Clements, 2016. "Are Macro-Forecasters Essentially The Same? An Analysis of Disagreement, Accuracy and Efficiency," ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance icma-dp2016-08, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    14. Michael P. Clements, 2014. "US Inflation Expectations and Heterogeneous Loss Functions, 1968–2010," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 1-14, January.
    15. Larsen, Vegard H. & Thorsrud, Leif Anders & Zhulanova, Julia, 2021. "News-driven inflation expectations and information rigidities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 507-520.
    16. Döpke Jörg & Fritsche Ulrich & Waldhof Gabi, 2019. "Theories, Techniques and the Formation of German Business Cycle Forecasts : Evidence from a survey of professional forecasters," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 239(2), pages 203-241, April.
    17. Link, Sebastian & Peichl, Andreas & Roth, Christopher & Wohlfart, Johannes, 2023. "Information frictions among firms and households," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 99-115.
    18. 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.
    19. Jean-Paul L’Huillier & Sanjay R Singh & Donghoon Yoo, 2024. "Incorporating Diagnostic Expectations into the New Keynesian Framework," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(5), pages 3013-3046.
    20. Qiu, Yajie & Deschamps, Bruno & Liu, Xiaoquan, 2024. "Uncertainty and macroeconomic forecasts: Evidence from survey data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 463-480.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Survey forecasts; Anti-herding; Information rigidities; Inflation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - 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:eee:ecmode:v:100:y:2021:i:c:s0264999321001127. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30411 .

    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.