We revisit the sources of the bias in Federal Reserve forecasts and assess whether a precautionary motive can explain the forecast bias. In contrast to the existing literature, we use forecasts submitted by individual FOMC members to uncover members' implicit loss function. Our key finding is...

This paper uses monthly survey data for the G7 countries for the time period 1989 - 2007 to explore the link between expectations on nominal wages, prices and unemployment rate as suggested by the traditional and Samuelson-and-Solow-type Phillips curve. Three major findings stand out: First, we...

We study whether forecasts of the rate of change of the price of oil are rational. To this end, we consider a model that allows the shape of forecasters' loss function to be studied. The shape of forecasters' loss function may be consistent with a symmetric or an asymmetric loss function. We...

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...

Twice a year FOMC members submit forecasts for growth, unemplyoment and in ation to be published in the Humphrey-Hawkins Report to Congress. In this paper we use individual FOMC forecasts to assess whether these forecasts exhibit herding behavior, a pattern often found in private sector...

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...

Recent price trends in housing markets may reflect herding of market participants. A natural question is whether such herding, to the extent that it occurred, reflects herding in forecasts of professional forecasters. Using survey data for Canada, Japan, and the United States, we did not find...

With regard to interest rate forecasts, earlier researchers have found mixed evidence of forecaster herding. Using the Livingston survey data, we reexamined the case for forecaster herding. We did not find evidence of forecaster herding. On the contrary, we found strong evidence of forecaster...

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...