IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/976.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Probability Distributions or Point Predictions? Survey Forecasts of US Output Growth and Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Clements, Michael P

    (University of Warwick)

Abstract

We consider whether survey respondents’probability distributions, reported as histograms, provide reliable and coherent point predictions, when viewed through the lens of a Bayesian learning model, and whether they are well calibrated more generally. We argue that a role remains for eliciting directly-reported point predictions in surveys of professional forecasters. Key words: probability distribution forecasts ; point forecasts ; Bayesian learning JEL classification: C53

Suggested Citation

  • Clements, Michael P, 2012. "Probability Distributions or Point Predictions? Survey Forecasts of US Output Growth and Inflation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 976, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:976
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2012/twerp_976.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giordani, Paolo & Soderlind, Paul, 2003. "Inflation forecast uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1037-1059, December.
    2. Clements, Michael P., 2010. "Explanations of the inconsistencies in survey respondents' forecasts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 536-549, May.
    3. Xuguang Sheng & Jingyun Yang, 2013. "Truncated Product Methods for Panel Unit Root Tests," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(4), pages 624-636, August.
    4. Engelberg, Joseph & Manski, Charles F. & Williams, Jared, 2009. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 30-41.
    5. Berkowitz, Jeremy, 2001. "Testing Density Forecasts, with Applications to Risk Management," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(4), pages 465-474, October.
    6. Croushore, Dean & Stark, Tom, 2001. "A real-time data set for macroeconomists," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 111-130, November.
    7. Victor Zarnowitz & Phillip Braun, 1993. "Twenty-two Years of the NBER-ASA Quarterly Economic Outlook Surveys: Aspects and Comparisons of Forecasting Performance," NBER Chapters, in: Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting, pages 11-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. 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.
    9. Gianna Boero & Jeremy Smith & Kenneth F. 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.
    10. Diebold, Francis X & Gunther, Todd A & Tay, Anthony S, 1998. "Evaluating Density Forecasts with Applications to Financial Risk Management," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 863-883, November.
    11. Stark, Tom & Croushore, Dean, 2002. "Forecasting with a real-time data set for macroeconomists," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 507-531, December.
    12. Batchelor, Roy & Dua, Pami, 1991. "Blue Chip Rationality Tests," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(4), pages 692-705, November.
    13. 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.
    14. Boero, Gianna & Smith, Jeremy & Wallis, Kenneth F., 2008. "Evaluating a three-dimensional panel of point forecasts: The Bank of England Survey of External Forecasters," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 354-367.
    15. Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2010. "Learning and heterogeneity in GDP and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 265-292, April.
    16. Clements, Michael P & Galvão, Ana Beatriz, 2008. "Macroeconomic Forecasting With Mixed-Frequency Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 546-554.
    17. Manzanares, Andrés & Garcí­a, Juan Angel, 2007. "Reporting biases and survey results: evidence from European professional forecasters," Working Paper Series 836, European Central Bank.
    18. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2006. "Estimation and Inference in Large Heterogeneous Panels with a Multifactor Error Structure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 967-1012, July.
    19. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1993. "Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number stoc93-1.
    20. Anthony Tay & Kenneth F. Wallis, 2000. "Density Forecasting: A Survey," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0370, Econometric Society.
    21. 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.
    22. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Modeling inflation after the crisis," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 173-220.
    23. Dean Croushore, 1993. "Introducing: the survey of professional forecasters," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Nov, pages 3-15.
    24. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W. (ed.), 1993. "Business Cycles, Indicators, and Forecasting," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226774886, September.
    25. J. Steven Landefeld & Eugene P. Seskin & Barbara M. Fraumeni, 2008. "Taking the Pulse of the Economy: Measuring GDP," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 193-216, Spring.
    26. Stephen G. Hall & James Mitchell, 2009. "Recent Developments in Density Forecasting," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Terence C. Mills & Kerry Patterson (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Econometrics, chapter 5, pages 199-239, Palgrave Macmillan.
    27. Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2008. "Evolution of forecast disagreement in a Bayesian learning model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 325-340, June.
    28. Patton, Andrew J. & Timmermann, Allan, 2010. "Why do forecasters disagree? Lessons from the term structure of cross-sectional dispersion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 803-820, October.
    29. Sebastiano Manzan, 2011. "Differential Interpretation in the Survey of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(5), pages 993-1017, August.
    30. Andrew Atkeson & Lee E. Ohanian, 2001. "Are Phillips curves useful for forecasting inflation?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 25(Win), pages 2-11.
    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. Gergely Ganics & Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2019. "From fixed-event to fixed-horizon density forecasts: obtaining measures of multi-horizon uncertainty from survey density forecasts," Working Papers 1947, Banco de España.
    2. Olesya Grishchenko & Sarah Mouabbi & Jean‐Paul Renne, 2019. "Measuring Inflation Anchoring and Uncertainty: A U.S. and Euro Area Comparison," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(5), pages 1053-1096, August.
    3. Fernando Borraz & Laura Zacheo, 2018. "Inattention, Disagreement and Internal (In)Consistency of Inflation Forecasts," Documentos de trabajo 2018007, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    4. Alexander Dietrich & Edward S. Knotek & Kristian Ove R. Myrseth & Robert W. Rich & Raphael Schoenle & Michael Weber, 2022. "Greater Than the Sum of the Parts: Aggregate vs. Aggregated Inflation Expectations," Working Papers 22-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    5. Robert Rich & Joseph Tracy, 2021. "A Closer Look at the Behavior of Uncertainty and Disagreement: Micro Evidence from the Euro Area," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(1), pages 233-253, February.
    6. Schick, Manuel, 2024. "Real-time Nowcasting Growth-at-Risk using the Survey of Professional Forecasters," Working Papers 0750, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    7. Glas, Alexander & Hartmann, Matthias, 2016. "Inflation uncertainty, disagreement and monetary policy: Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 215-228.
    8. Stanisławska, Ewa & Paloviita, Maritta & Łyziak, Tomasz, 2019. "Assessing reliability of aggregated inflation views in the European Commission consumer survey," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 10/2019, Bank of Finland.
    9. Dietrich, Alexander M., 2023. "Consumption categories, household attention, and inflation expectations: Implications for optimal monetary policy," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 157, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    10. Michael P. Clements, 2015. "Are Professional Macroeconomic Forecasters Able To Do Better Than Forecasting Trends?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(2-3), pages 349-382, March.
    11. Clements, Michael P., 2018. "Are macroeconomic density forecasts informative?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 181-198.
    12. Rossi, Barbara & Ganics, Gergely & Sekhposyan, Tatevik, 2020. "From Fixed-event to Fixed-horizon Density Forecasts: Obtaining Measures of Multi-horizon Uncertainty from Survey Density Foreca," CEPR Discussion Papers 14267, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Clements, Michael P. & Galvão, Ana Beatriz, 2017. "Model and survey estimates of the term structure of US macroeconomic uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 591-604.
    14. Sheng, Xuguang (Simon) & Thevenot, Maya, 2015. "Quantifying differential interpretation of public information using financial analysts’ earnings forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 515-530.
    15. Todd E. Clark & Gergely Ganics & Elmar Mertens, 2022. "What is the Predictive Value of SPF Point and Density Forecasts?," Working Papers 22-37, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    16. Glas, Alexander, 2020. "Five dimensions of the uncertainty–disagreement linkage," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 607-627.
    17. Zhao, Yongchen, 2023. "Internal consistency of household inflation expectations: Point forecasts vs. density forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1713-1735.
    18. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2019_010 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Stanisławska, Ewa & Paloviita, Maritta & Łyziak, Tomasz, 2019. "Assessing reliability of aggregated inflation views in the European Commission consumer survey," Research Discussion Papers 10/2019, Bank of Finland.

    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. Clements, Michael P., 2010. "Explanations of the inconsistencies in survey respondents' forecasts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 536-549, May.
    2. Clements, Michael P. & Galvão, Ana Beatriz, 2017. "Model and survey estimates of the term structure of US macroeconomic uncertainty," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 591-604.
    3. Clements, Michael P, 2012. "Subjective and Ex Post Forecast Uncertainty : US Inflation and Output Growth," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 995, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. Clements, Michael P., 2012. "Do professional forecasters pay attention to data releases?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 297-308.
    5. 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.
    6. Clements, Michael P., 2018. "Are macroeconomic density forecasts informative?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 181-198.
    7. Clements, Michael P., 2019. "Do forecasters target first or later releases of national accounts data?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1240-1249.
    8. Manzan, Sebastiano, 2021. "Are professional forecasters Bayesian?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    9. Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2010. "Learning and heterogeneity in GDP and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 265-292, April.
    10. Clements, Michael P., 2010. "Why are survey forecasts superior to model forecasts?," Economic Research Papers 270770, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    11. Harvey, David I. & Newbold, Paul, 2003. "The non-normality of some macroeconomic forecast errors," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 635-653.
    12. Clements, Michael P., 2006. "Internal consistency of survey respondentsíforecasts: Evidence based on the Survey of Professional Forecasters," Economic Research Papers 269742, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    13. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    14. Clements, Michael P., 2016. "Long-run restrictions and survey forecasts of output, consumption and investment," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 614-628.
    15. João Valle e Azevedo & João Tovar Jalles, 2011. "Rational vs. Professional Forecasts," Working Papers w201114, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    16. Davies, Antony, 2006. "A framework for decomposing shocks and measuring volatilities derived from multi-dimensional panel data of survey forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 373-393.
    17. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2007. "Inflation targeting under imperfect knowledge," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-23.
    18. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2005. "The decline of activist stabilization policy: Natural rate misperceptions, learning, and expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1927-1950, November.
    19. repec:zbw:bofrdp:037 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2007. "Robust monetary policy with imperfect knowledge," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 1406-1435, July.
    21. Clements, Michael P., 2021. "Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 634-646.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    probability distribution forecasts ; point forecasts ; bayesian learning jel classification: c53;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wrk:warwec:976. 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: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.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.