Can Professional Forecasters Predict Uncertain Times?
Economic surveys are very popular these days and for a good reason. They tell us how the folks being surveyed—professional forecasters, households, firm managers—feel about the economy. So, for instance, the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) website displays an inflation uncertainty measure that tells us households are more uncertain about inflation than they were pre-COVID, but a bit less than they were a few months ago. The Philadelphia Fed’s Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) tells us that forecasters believed last May that there was a lower risk of negative 2024 real GDP growth than there was last February. The question addressed in this post is: Does this information actually have any predictive content? Specifically, I will focus on the SPF and ask: When professional forecasters indicate that their uncertainty about future output or inflation is higher, does that mean that output or inflation is actually becoming more uncertain, in the sense that the SPF will have a harder time predicting these variables?
Are Professional Forecasters Overconfident?
The post-COVID years have not been kind to professional forecasters, whether from the private sector or policy institutions: their forecast errors for both output growth and inflation have increased dramatically relative to pre-COVID (see Figure 1 in this paper). In this two-post series we ask: First, are forecasters aware of their own fallibility? That is, when they provide measures of the uncertainty around their forecasts, are such measures on average in line with the size of the prediction errors they make? Second, can forecasters predict uncertain times? That is, does their own assessment of uncertainty change on par with changes in their forecasting ability? As we will see, the answer to both questions sheds light of whether forecasters are rational. And the answer to both questions is “no” for horizons longer than one year but is perhaps surprisingly “yes” for shorter-run forecasts.
What Is “Outlook‑at‑Risk?”
Editor’s note: Since this post was first published, the y-axis label in the last chart has been corrected. February 15, 9:30 a.m.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has increased the target range for the federal funds rate by 4.50 percentage points since March 16, 2022. In tightening the stance of monetary policy, the FOMC balances the risk of inflation remaining persistently high if the economy continues to run “hot” against the risk of unemployment rising as the economy cools. In this post, we review a quantitative approach to measuring the evolution of risks to real GDP growth, the unemployment rate, and inflation that is inspired by our previous work on “Vulnerable Growth.” We find that, in February, downside risks to real GDP growth and upside risks to unemployment moderated slightly, and upside risks to inflation continued to decline.
Trade Policy Uncertainty May Affect the Organization of Firms’ Supply Chains
Global trade policy uncertainty has increased significantly, largely because of a changing tariff regime between the United States and China. In this blog post, we argue that trade policy can have a significant effect on firms’ organization of supply chains. When the probability of a trade war rises, firms become less likely to form long-term, just-in-time relationships with foreign suppliers, which may lead to higher costs and welfare losses for consumers. Our research shows that even in the absence of actual tariff changes, an increased likelihood of a trade war can significantly distort U.S. imports.