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OECD Economics Department Working Papers

Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.

The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

Anglais, Français

A Post-Mortem on Economic Outlook Projections

This paper reviews the accuracy of the OECD Economic Outlook projections — both “current year” and “year ahead” — for output growth, inflation and current account balances (as a percentage of GDP) for the major seven countries, as well as projections for world trade growth. The sample period differs somewhat between the variables, depending on data availability, but it runs until 1998 in all cases. Several evaluation criteria were used to assess the accuracy of the OECD Economic Outlook projections. These include an inspection of projection error summary statistics; comparisons with “naive” alternative forecasts; statistical tests for unbiasedness and efficiency; and testing for directional accuracy. In addition, the paper provides an examination of the performance of OECD Economic Outlook projections over different time periods. The findings suggest that, on the basis of the conventional statistical criteria, the current year projections outperform the year ahead projections ...

Anglais

Mots-clés: unbiasedness and efficiency, forecasting accuracy, error analysis
JEL: F47: International Economics / Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance / Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications; F17: International Economics / Trade / Trade: Forecasting and Simulation; E17: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / General Aggregative Models / General Aggregative Models: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications; E37: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
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