We find evidence of a cyclical and seasonal bias in the annual benchmark revisions to the monthly level of non-farm payroll employment. We propose a change to the methodology that would remove the seasonal bias and ensure that the benchmark process does not artificially influence the estimated...

We present a novel approach to assessing the attentiveness of professional forecasters to news about the macroeconomy. We find evidence that professional forecasters, taken as a group, do not always update their estimates of the current state of the economy to reflect the latest releases of...

In this paper we explore the consequences for forecasting of the following two facts: first, that over time statistical agencies revise and improve published data, so that observations on more recent events are those that are least well measured. Second, that economies are such that observations...

Over time, economic statistics are refined. This means that newer data is typically less well measured than old data. Time variation in measurement error like this influences how forecasts should be made. We show how modelling the behaviour of the statistics agency generates both an estimate of...