Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223183 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
Working Papers of the Priority Programme 1859 "Experience and Expectation. Historical Foundations of Economic Behaviour" No. 2
Publisher: 
Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin
Abstract: 
The paper reports results of a survey among active forecasters of the German business cycle. Relying on 82 respondents from 37 different institutions, we investigate what models and theories forecasters subscribe to and find that they are pronounced conservative in the sense, that they overwhelmingly rely on methods and theories that have been well-established for a long time, while more recent approaches are relatively unimportant for the practice of business cycle forecasting. DSGE models are mostly used in public institutions. In line with findings in the literature there are tendencies of "leaning towards consensus" (especially for public institutions) and "sticky adjustment of forecasts" with regard to new information. We find little evidence that the behaviour of forecasters has changed fundamentally since the Great Recession but there are signs that forecast errors are evaluated more carefully. Also, a stable relationship between preferred theories and methods and forecast accuracy cannot be established.
Subjects: 
Forecast error evaluation
questionnaire
survey
business cycle forecast
professional forecaster
JEL: 
E32
E37
C83
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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