Volume 11, Issue 4 December 2015

Can Macroeconomists Forecast Risk? Event-Based Evidence from the Euro-Area SPF

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.

Authors

  • Geoff Kenny
  • Thomas Kostka
  • Federico Masera

JEL codes

  • C22
  • C53

Other papers in this issue

Mikael Apel and Carl Andreas Claussen and Petra Lennartsdotter and Øistein Røisland

Eyal Argov and Alon Binyamini and Eliezer Borenstein and Irit Rozenshtrom