Recent research has documented that the Federal Reserve produces systematic errors in forecasting inflation, real GDP growth, and the unemployment rate, even though these forecasts are unbiased. We show that these systematic errors reveal that the Fed is “surprised” by real and inflationary...

This paper reconciles contradictory findings obtained from forecast evaluations: the existence of systematic errors and the failure to reject rationality in the presence of such errors. Systematic errors in one economic state may offset the opposite types of errors in the other state such that...