IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/whu/wpaper/11-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do private sector forecasters desire to deviate from the German council of economic experts?

Author

Listed:
  • Jan-Christoph Rülke

Abstract

In this paper, we contrast more than 6,000 private sector forecasts to projections of the German council of economic experts (Sachverständigenrat). Although the forecasts are submitted simultaneously, we find that the council's real economy forecasts, i.e. their growth, unemployment and fiscal forecasts have a higher forecast accuracy compared to the private sector forecasts. We also document that private sector forecasters deliberately place their real economy forecasts away from the council's projection. This strategic forecasting behavior explains why the private sector performs worse than the council. This result is robust over time but splitting the private sector in different groups reveals that the forecasts of banks compared to research institutes deviate more from the council's forecast.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan-Christoph Rülke, 2011. "Do private sector forecasters desire to deviate from the German council of economic experts?," WHU Working Paper Series - Economics Group 11-04, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:whu:wpaper:11-04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:992-opus4-4203
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lux, Thomas, 2009. "Rational forecasts or social opinion dynamics? Identification of interaction effects in a business climate survey," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 638-655, November.
    2. Lakonishok, Josef & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 1992. "The impact of institutional trading on stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 23-43, August.
    3. Thomas Lux, 2009. "Rational Forecasts or Social Opinion Dynamics? Identification of Interaction Effects in a Business Climate Survey," Post-Print hal-00720175, HAL.
    4. Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Tillmann, Peter, 2011. "Do FOMC members herd?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 176-179.
    5. Carstensen Kai & Wohlrabe Klaus & Ziegler Christina, 2011. "Predictive Ability of Business Cycle Indicators under Test: A Case Study for the Euro Area Industrial Production," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 231(1), pages 82-106, February.
    6. Lamont, Owen A., 2002. "Macroeconomic forecasts and microeconomic forecasters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 265-280, July.
    7. Keane, Michael P & Runkle, David E, 1990. "Testing the Rationality of Price Forecasts: New Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 714-735, September.
    8. 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.
    9. Jörg Döpke & Ulrich Fritsche & Boriss Siliverstovs, 2010. "Evaluating German business cycle forecasts under an asymmetric loss function," OECD Journal: Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis, OECD Publishing, Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys, vol. 2010(1), pages 1-18.
    10. Steven P. Peterson, 2001. "Rational Bias In Yield Curve Forecasts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 457-464, August.
    11. Graham Elliott & Ivana Komunjer & Allan Timmermann, 2008. "Biases in Macroeconomic Forecasts: Irrationality or Asymmetric Loss?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 122-157, March.
    12. Roy Batchelor, 2001. "How useful are the forecasts of intergovernmental agencies? The IMF and OECD versus the consensus," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 225-235.
    13. Bernhardt, Dan & Campello, Murillo & Kutsoati, Edward, 2006. "Who herds?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 657-675, June.
    14. Dicke, Hugo & Glismann, Hans H., 2002. "Haben sich die Konjunkturprognosen des Sachverständigenrates verbessert?," Wirtschaftsdienst – Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik (1949 - 2007), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 82(12), pages 736-740.
    15. Weidmann, Jens, 2002. "Hat sich die Prognosetreffsicherheit des Sachverständigenrates systematisch verändert?," Wirtschaftsdienst – Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik (1949 - 2007), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 82(12), pages 741-747.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rülke Jan-Christoph, 2012. "Do Private Sector Forecasters Desire to Deviate From the German Council of Economic Experts?," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 232(4), pages 414-428, August.
    2. Frenkel, Michael & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Zimmermann, Lilli, 2013. "Do private sector forecasters chase after IMF or OECD forecasts?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 217-229.
    3. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2016. "Assessing macroeconomic forecasts for Japan under an asymmetric loss function," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 233-242.
    4. Jan-Christoph Rülke & Maria Silgoner & Julia Wörz, 2012. "Herding Behavior of Business Cycle Forecasters in Times of Economic Crises," WHU Working Paper Series - Economics Group 12-03, WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
    5. Reitz Stefan & Rülke Jan-Christoph & Stadtmann Georg, 2010. "Regressive Oil Price Expectations Toward More Fundamental Values of the Oil Price," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(4), pages 454-466, August.
    6. Michael P Clements, 2014. "Assessing the Evidence of Macro- Forecaster Herding: Forecasts of Inflation and Output Growth," ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance icma-dp2014-12, Henley Business School, University of Reading.
    7. Pierdzioch, Christian & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2013. "A note on forecasting the prices of gold and silver: Asymmetric loss and forecast rationality," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 294-301.
    8. 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.
    9. Pierdzioch, Christian & Reid, Monique B. & Gupta, Rangan, 2016. "Forecasting the South African inflation rate: On asymmetric loss and forecast rationality," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 82-92.
    10. Papastamos, Dimitrios & Matysiak, George & Stevenson, Simon, 2015. "Assessing the accuracy and dispersion of real estate investment forecasts," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 141-152.
    11. Tsuchiya, Yoichi, 2015. "Herding behavior and loss functions of exchange rate forecasters over interventions and financial crises," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 266-276.
    12. Pierdzioch, Christian & Rülke, Jan Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2012. "House price forecasts in times of crisis: Do forecasters herd?," Discussion Papers 318, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.
    13. Reitz, Stefan & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2012. "Nonlinear expectations in speculative markets – Evidence from the ECB survey of professional forecasters," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1349-1363.
    14. 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.
    15. Pierdzioch, Christian & Reid, Monique B. & Gupta, Rangan, 2016. "Inflation forecasts and forecaster herding: Evidence from South African survey data," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 42-50.
    16. Georg Stadtmann & Christian Pierdzioch & Jan Ruelke, 2011. "Scattered Fiscal Forecasts," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(3), pages 2558-2568.
    17. Fendel, Ralf & Frenkel, Michael & Rülke, Jan-Christoph, 2011. ""Ex-ante" Taylor rules and expectation forming in emerging markets," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 230-244, June.
    18. Reitz, Stefan & Rülke, Jan-Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2009. "Are oil price forecasters finally right? Regressive expectations toward more fundamental values of the oil price," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2009,32, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    19. Pierdzioch, Christian & Rülke, Jan Christoph & Stadtmann, Georg, 2010. "New evidence of anti-herding of oil-price forecasters," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1456-1459, November.
    20. Bizer, Kilian & Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till & Spiwoks, Markus, 2014. "Strategic coordination in forecasting: An experimental study," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 195, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Private Sector Forecasters; Herding; German Council of Economic Experts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    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:whu:wpaper:11-04. 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: Rainer Michael Rilke (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/whukode.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.