What Do We Know About G-7 Macro Forecasts?

Fildes and Stekler’s (2002) survey of the state of knowledge about the quality of economic forecasts focused primarily on US and UK data. This paper will draw on some of their findings but it will not examine any additional US forecasts. The purpose is to determine whether their results are robust by examining the predictions of other countries. The focus will be on (1) directional errors, (2) the magnitude of the errors made in estimating growth and inflation, (3) whether there were biases and systematic errors, (4) the sources of the errors and (5) whether there has been an improvement in forecasting ability.