Forecast Disagreement in the Survey of Professional Forecasters

www.philadelphiafed.org THE SURVEY’S DESIGN The SPF is the oldest quarterly survey of macroeconomic forecasts in the United States, having been initiated in 1968 under the leadership of Victor Zarnowitz at the American Statistical Association and the National Bureau of Economic Research. After conducting what was then known as the ASA-NBER Quarterly Economic Outlook Survey for 22 years, the ASANBER turned the survey over to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in 1990, at which time it was renamed the Survey of Professional Forecasters. The Philadelphia Fed’s Real-Time Data Research Center now conducts the SPF. A panel of professional forecasters (there are usually around 45 respondents per survey) is asked to give projections for a range of major macroeconomic variables over various time horizons.2 To maintain high quality, the SPF screens its participants. Most have had advanced training in economic theory and statistics and use statistical models to generate their projections. To keep the integrity of the survey high, participation is limited to those employed by firms or paid by clients to generate forecasts now or in the past. Because of these criteria and the types of individuals who participate in the SPF, we M By KEiTh Sill Forecast Disagreement in the Survey of Professional Forecasters