Where is the Fed in the distribution of forecasters?

Previous research comparing the Fed's Greenbook forecasts with a median forecast from a private-sector panel has found that the Fed's forecasts are superior. These comparisons potentially miss information from other parts of the distribution of forecast errors. We compare the Fed's forecast errors to the upper and lower quartiles from the Survey of Professional Forecasters' forecast errors and find that errors in the lower quartile are significantly smaller. We further investigate whether the forecasters who produced those forecast errors can be identified ex-ante and find that while possible the practicality of this finding is limited due to forecaster turnover. (C) 2014 Society for Policy Modeling.

Title	Where is the Fed in the distribution of forecasters?
Creator	Smith, Julie K.
	Gamber, Edward
	McNamara, D. C.
Publisher	Journal of Policy Modeling
Academic Department	Economics
Division	Social Sciences
Organization	Lafayette College
Date Issued	2014
Date Available	2015-04-14T14:28:09Z
Type	Article
Language	English
Keyword	forecasting
Keyword	monetary policy
Bibliographic Citation	Gamber, E., J. K. Smith, and D. C. McNamara (2014) "Where is the Fed in the distribution of forecasters?" Journal of Policy Modeling 36 (2): 296-312.
Standard Identifier	DOI 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2013.11.002
Standard Identifier	Handle 10385/1788
Permalink	http://hdl.handle.net/10385/1788
Rights Statement	In Copyright
Rights Holders	Society for Policy Modeling