Our next article talks about change-as in coins. Every year, the government produces about 70 new coins for every man, woman, and child. But the economy's need for coins can vary from year to year. So how do the U.S. Mint, which makes the coins, and the Federal Reserve, which distributes them,...

For most of the 1990s, forecasters have been predicting an upturn in inflation. Yet, over that same period, the United States has experienced stable or declining inflation. Why have forecasts been at odds with reality? And why does it matter? In this article, Dean Croushore considers some...

Forecasts of inflation affect decision-making in many segments of the economy. But in the early 1980s, economists found that forecasts in surveys taken over the past 20 years systematically underpredicted inflation. As a result, many economists stopped paying attention to forecasts. However,...

In “Consumer Confidence Surveys: Can They Help Us Forecast Consumer Spending in Real Time?,” Dean Croushore uses the Philadelphia Fed’s real-time data set to investigate an important question: Does using data available to forecasters at the time — that is, real-time data — make...

For almost 20 years, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has conducted both the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Livingston Survey. Both surveys of private-sector forecasters provide researchers, central bankers, news media, and the public with detailed forecasts of major...

Laurence Ball and Dean Croushore look at forecasts from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to determine if forecasts and the economy respond in tandem or if there are significant differences.