December 2015 issue contents
Can Macroeconomists Forecast Risk? Event-Based Evidence from the Euro-Area SPF

by Geoff Kenny,a Thomas Kostkaa and Federico Maserab

Abstract

We apply methods to evaluate the risk assessments collected as part of the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). Our approach focuses on direction-of-change predictions as well as the prediction of more specific high and low macroeconomic outcomes located in the upper and lower regions of the predictive densities. For inflation and GDP growth, we find such surveyed densities are informative about future direction of change. Regarding high and low outcome events, the surveys are most informative about GDP growth outcomes and at short horizons. The upper and lower regions of the predictive densities for inflation appear less informative.

JEL Codes: C22, C53.

 
Full article (PDF, 46 pages, 1929 kb)


a European Central Bank 
b Universidad Carlos III de Madrid