In this paper we present a multivariate analysis of the Federal Reserve’s forecasts. First, we use existing univariate methods to evaluate each of the Fed’s forecasts of the ten major expenditure categories of real GDP which have not previously been evaluated in the literature. Second, we...

In this paper we jointly evaluate the Federal Reserve staff forecasts of U.S. real output growth and the inflation rate, assuming that the forecasts are to be used as inputs for the Taylor rule. Our simple methodology generates “policy forecast errors” which have a direct interpretation for...

Recent declines in job tenure have coincided with a shift away from traditional defined benefit (DB) pensions, which reward long tenure. Recent evidence also points to an increase in job-to-job movements by workers, and we document gains in relative wages of job-to-job movers over a similar...

We show that systematic forecast errors reveal that the Fed is "surprised" by real and inflationary cycles. The Fed knows the state of the economy for the current quarter, but cannot predict it one-quarter ahead.

In this paper we examine the quality of the initial estimates of headline GDP and 10 major components of both real and nominal U.S. GDP. We ask a number of questions about various characteristics of the differences between the initial estimates, available one month after the end of the quarter,...