Is it possible to forecast using poorly measured data? According to the permanent income hypothesis, a low personal saving rate should predict rising future income (Campbell, 1987). However, the U.S. personal saving rate is initially poorly measured and has been repeatedly revised upward in...

Initially published estimates of the personal saving rate from 1965 Q3 to 1999 Q2, which averaged 5.3 percent, have been revised up 2.8 percentage points to 8.1 percent, as we document. We show that much of the initial variations in personal saving rate across time was pure noise. Nominal...

Initially published estimates of the personal saving rate from 1965 Q3 to 1999 Q2, which averaged 5.3 percent, have been revised up 2.8 percentage points to 8.1 percent, as we document. We show that much of the initial variation in the personal saving rate across time was meaningless noise....

Is it possible to forecast using poorly measured data? According to the permanent income hypothesis, a low personal saving rate should predict rising future income (Campbell, 1987). However, the U.S. personal saving rate is initially poorly measured and has been repeatedly revised upward in...

This paper reexamines the forecasting ability of Phillips curves from both an unconditional and conditional perspective by applying the method developed by Giacomini and White (2006). We find that forecasts from our Phillips curve models tend to be unconditionally inferior to those from our...

The Phillips curve has long been used as a foundation for forecasting inflation. Yet numerous studies indicate that over the past 20 years or so, inflation forecasts based on the Phillips curve generally do not predict inflation any better than a univariate forecasting model. In this paper, the...

Residential house price indexes (HPI) are used for a large variety of macroeconomic and microeconomic research and policy purposes, as well as for automated valuation models. As is well known, these indexes are subject to substantial revisions in the months following the initial release, both...

Do professional forecasters distort their reported forecasts in a way that compromises accuracy? New research in the theory of forecasting suggests such a possibility. In a recent paper, Owen Lamont finds that forecasters in the Business Week survey make more radical forecasts as they gain...