The Census Bureau makes periodic long-term forecasts of both the total US population and the population of each of the states. Previous evaluations of these forecasts were based on the magnitude of the discrepancies between the projected and actual population figures. However, it might be...

Previous research on defining and measuring consensus (agreement) among forecasters has been concerned with evaluation of forecasts of continuous variables. This previous work is not relevant when the forecasts involve binary decisions: up-down or win-lose. In this paper we use Cohen¡¯s kappa...

Recruiting competent personnel is crucial for the success of any organization, especially in competitive sports where the success of teams depends upon the quality of players selected. This paper examines whether football executives are able to forecast who will be the most successful...

In empirical tests guided by recent theory (e.g., Hughes, Liu and Liu 2007; and Lambert, Leuz and Verrecchia 2012), we examine the joint effects of information asymmetry and information precision on the cost of capital and how these effects vary based on the amount and quality of available...

The most common forecasting methods in business are based on exponential smoothing and the most common time series in business are inherently non-negative. Therefore it is of interest to consider the properties of the potential stochastic models underlying exponential smoothing when applied to...

This paper investigates the change in private-sector and Federal Reserve forecasts before and after the Great Moderation. We view the Great Moderation as a natural experiment. Using forecasts produced by the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Federal Reserve (Greenbook forecasts) we...

Statistical process control (SPC) has evolved beyond its classical applications in manufacturing to monitoring economic and social phenomena. This extension requires consideration of autocorrelated and possibly non-stationary time series. Less attention has been paid to the possibility that the...

Over the past 50 or so years, I have been concerned with the quality of economic forecasts and have written both about the procedures for evaluating these predictions and the results that were obtained from these evaluations. In this paper I provide some perspectives on the issues involved in...

This paper asks whether the accuracy of German macroeconomic forecasts has improved over time. We examine one-year-ahead forecasts of rates of real GDP growth and inflation for the years 1967 to 2010 by three major German forecasters and the OECD. We find that overall error levels are high but...

A great amount of effort is spent in forecasting the outcome of sporting events, but few papers have focused exclusively on the characteristics of sports forecasts. Rather, many papers have been written about the efficiency of sports betting markets. As it turns out, it is possible to derive...