IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uerssr/278679.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Accuracy of USDA's Export Forecasts

Author

Listed:
  • MacDonald, Stephen

Abstract

USDA's quarterly forecasts of fiscal year agricultural exports by commodity and region were examined for their reliability in predicting annual changes during 1977-89. Most of the forecasts were strongly correlated with actual exports. Most obvious exceptions probably stemmed from rounding errors. Bias was not a problem for the forecasts of total exports in any quarter, nor for most of the commodity forecasts. There was some upward bias in the forecasts for less developed countries, and downward bias for some developed countries. The USDA forecasts were conservative; they were more likely to underestimate the magnitude of change than to overestimate it.

Suggested Citation

  • MacDonald, Stephen, 1992. "The Accuracy of USDA's Export Forecasts," Staff Reports 278679, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:uerssr:278679
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.278679
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/278679/files/ers-report-576.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.278679?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lovell, Michael C, 1986. "Tests of the Rational Expectations Hypothesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 110-124, March.
    2. Gardner, George R. & Skully, Davide W., 1986. "The Conduct Of Wheat Marketing In North Africa," Staff Reports 277903, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    3. Kost, William E., 1980. "Model Validation And The Net Trade Model," Journal of Agricultural Economics Research, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, vol. 32(2), pages 1-16, April.
    4. J. Kimball Dietrich & Alfredo D. Gutierrez, 1973. "An Evaluation of Short-Term Forecasts of Coffee and Cocoa," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 55(1), pages 93-99.
    5. James M. Thomson, 1974. "Analysis of the Accuracy of USDA Hog Farrowings Statistics," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1213-1217.
    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. MacDonald, Stephen & Ash, Mark, 2016. "Detecting the Sources of Information Rigidity: Analyzing Forecast Bias and Smoothing in USDA’s Soybean Forecasts," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235349, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. 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.

    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. Stan Hurn & Jing Tian & Lina Xu, 2021. "Assessing the Informational Content of Official Australian Bureau of Meteorology Forecasts of Wind Speed," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 97(319), pages 525-547, December.
    2. Grant, Warren R. & Beach, John & Lin, William, 1984. "Factors Affecting Supply, Demand, And Prices Of U.S. Rice," Staff Reports 277629, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    3. Alessia De Stefani, 2021. "House price history, biased expectations, and credit cycles: The role of housing investors," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1238-1266, December.
    4. Victor Zarnowitz, 1997. "Business Cycles Observed and Assessed: Why and How They Matter," NBER Working Papers 6230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Burton, Diana M. & Love, H. Alan, 1996. "A Review of Alternative Expectations Regimes in Commodity Markets: Specification, Estimation, and Hypothesis Testing Using Structural Models," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 213-231, October.
    6. Hugo Benítez-Silva & Debra Dwyer & Wayne-Roy Gayle & Thomas Muench, 2008. "Expectations in micro data: rationality revisited," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 381-416, March.
    7. Arnold Lutz, 2000. "Α Model of Debt Deflation and the Phillips Curve: Implications for Business Cycles and the Balance Sheet Channel of Monetary Policy / Schulden-Deflation und die Phillips-Kurve: Implikationen für Konju," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 220(4), pages 385-399, August.
    8. Lahiri, Kajal & Yang, Liu, 2013. "Forecasting Binary Outcomes," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1025-1106, Elsevier.
    9. Alan S. Blinder, 1988. "The Fall and Rise of Keynesian Economics," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 64(4), pages 278-294, December.
    10. Benitez-Silva, Hugo & Dwyer, Debra S., 2006. "Expectation formation of older married couples and the rational expectations hypothesis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 191-218, April.
    11. Hugo Benítez-Silva & Debra S. Dwyer, 2003. "What to Expect when you are Expecting Rationality: Testing Rational Expectations using Micro Data," Working Papers wp037, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    12. Bell, William Paul, 2008. "Adaptive Interactive Profit Expectations and Small World Networks," MPRA Paper 37924, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Wärneryd, K.E., 1995. "Demystifying rational expectations theory through an economic-psychological model," Discussion Paper 1995-92, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    14. Tomáš Frömmel, 2017. "The Rational Expectations Hypothesis: Theoretical Critique," E-LOGOS, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2017(2), pages 4-12.
    15. Michael P. Keane & David E. Runkle, 1989. "Are economic forecasts rational?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 13(Spr), pages 26-33.
    16. Huh, Chan G. & Lansing, Kevin J., 2000. "Expectations, credibility, and disinflation in a small macroeconomic model," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 51-86.
    17. Philip Hans Franses, 2021. "Testing bias in professional forecasts," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(6), pages 1086-1094, September.
    18. Kaie Kerem & Enn Listra & Katrin Rahu, 2004. "Market Efficiency and Rational Expectations," Working Papers 112, Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology.
    19. Binder, Carola Conces, 2016. "Estimation of historical inflation expectations," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-31.
    20. Houston H. Stokes, 1990. "Measuring Expected Inflation; Further Tests in the Frequency Domain of a Proposed New Measure," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 339-348, Oct-Dec.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade;

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • Q17 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agriculture in International Trade

    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:ags:uerssr:278679. 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/ersgvus.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.