The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis has witnessed that house prices may have a profound effect on the economy. A key question for researchers and policymakers is what can be learnt from forecasts of changes in house prices. We use survey data from the WSJ forecast poll to analyze this question....

Based on the approach advanced by Elliott et al. (Rev. Ec. Studies. 72, 1197-1125), we found that the loss function of a sample of oil price forecasters is asymmetric in the forecast error. Our findings indicate that the loss oil price forecasters incurred when their forecasts exceeded the price...

Using survey forecasts of a large number of Asian, European, and South American emerging market exchange rates, we studied empirically whether evidence of herding or antiherding behavior of exchange-rate forecasters can be detected in the cross-section of forecasts. Emerging market exchange-rate...

We analyze more than 20,000 forecasts of nine metal prices at four different forecast horizons. We document that forecasts are heterogeneous and report that anti-herding appears to be a source of this heterogeneity. Forecaster anti-herding reflects strategic interactions among forecasters that...

Prognosen von Metallpreisen: Asymmetrische Verlustfunktionen und Rationalität Metalle sind ein wichtiger industrieller Roh- und Werkstoff. Aufgrund der sehr starken Schwankungen der Metallpreise stehen Prognosen der zukünftigen Preisentwicklung häufig im Fokus medialer Berichterstattung. In...

We study the rationality of the inflation forecasts of the central banks of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. We reject rationality under a symmetric (Chile is an exception) but not under an asymmetric loss function. An overprediction implies a larger loss than an underprediction. We also...

Using forecasts of exchange rates of the Brazilian real and the Mexican peso against the US dollar, we analyze the symmetry of the loss function of exchange-rate forecasters and the rationality of their forecasts. Symmetry of the loss function can be rejected for some forecasters but not all....

Based on the approach advanced by Elliott, Komunjer, and Timmermann (2005), we analyzed whether the loss function of a sample of exchange-rate forecasters is asymmetric in the forecast error. Using forecasts of the dollar/euro exchange rate, we found that the shape of the loss function varies...

We analyze more than 20,000 forecasts of nine metal prices at four different forecast horizons. We document that forecasts are heterogeneous and report that anti-herding appears to be a source of this heterogeneity. Forecaster anti-herding reflects strategic interactions among forecasters that...

Using survey forecasts of a large number of Asian, European, and South American emerging market exchange rates, we studied empirically whether evidence of herding or antiherding behavior of exchange-rate forecasters can be detected in the cross-section of forecasts. Emerging market exchange-rate...