We examine asymmetry in the loss function of Japanese corporate executives in their output growth forecasts and test for rationality of the forecasts under the assumption of a possibly asymmetric loss function. We find evidence of asymmetry and support for rationality under an asymmetric loss...

This paper estimates the New Keynesian Phillips curve for United Kingdom using survey forecasts of inflation. I find that, compared to traditional estimation methods, survey forecasts improve estimates of the New Keynesian Phillips curve and forecasting performance of inflation.

Based on a large international panel of surveyed GDP forecasts I analyze the frequency of forecast revisions and the factors that influence the likelihood of forecast revisions. I find that each month on average 40%–50% of forecasters revise their forecasts. In addition, I find that the...

We explore the evaluation (ranking) of point forecasts by a “stochastic loss distance” (SLD) criterion, under which we prefer forecasts with loss distributions F(L(e)) “close” to the unit step function at 0. We show that, surprisingly, ranking by SLD corresponds to ranking by expected loss.

We compare forecasts from different adaptive learning algorithms and calibrations applied to US real-time data on inflation and growth. We find that the Least Squares with constant gains adjusted to match (past) survey forecasts provides the best overall performance both in terms of forecasting...

This paper evaluates professional forecasters’ behavior using a panel data of individual forecasts. We find that (i) professional forecasts are behavioral, and (ii) there exists a stock–bond dissonance: the forecasting behavior seems to be stubborn in the stock market, but jumpy in the bond...

This letter evaluates forecasts from probit models that use the slope of the yield curve to forecast recessions. These models give reliable non-probabilistic warnings of recessions, but the estimated probabilities do not match the conditional frequency of recession months.

We investigate the directional accuracy of GDP and price forecasts by the Japanese government and the IMF with a new method developed by Pesaran and Timmermann [Pesaran, M.H., Timmermann, A., 2009. Testing dependence among serially correlated multi-category variables. Journal of the American...

It is well documented that the term structure of interest rates has predictive power for real economic growth. Applying the stepwise superior predictive ability test, we find that superior models contain both a short-term rate and a term spread.

This paper extends the Markov-switching vector autoregressive models to accommodate both the typical lack of synchronicity that characterizes the real-time daily flow of macroeconomic information and economic indicators sampled at different frequencies. The results of the empirical application...