Survey of Professional Forecasters

The Survey of Professional Forecasters is the oldest quarterly survey of macroeconomic forecasts in the United States. The survey began in 1968 and was conducted by the American Statistical Association and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia took over the survey in 1990. The respondents to the survey are professional forecasters who produce regular forecasts of economic variables. Twenty-seven different forecast variables are included in the survey (i.e. GDP, housing starts, unemployment, CPI, recession probability, stock returns, etc.).