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.
- ISSN : 18151973 (en ligne)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18151973
How do the OECD Growth Projections for the G7 Economies Perform?
A Post-Mortem
The quality of the OECD's Economic Outlook growth projections was last evaluated in-house at the peak
of the previous business cycle, calling for a reassessment. This paper analyses the OECD's annual GDP
growth projections for the G7 countries over the period 1991-2006 and compares them with the Consensus
Economics forecasts. It shows that OECD growth projections display a number of desirable features:
projections for the current year are unbiased and efficient; projection errors tend to shrink as the horizon
shortens; and projections are directionally accurate most of the time. Like those produced elsewhere, the
OECD projections also suffer from shortcomings: one-year-ahead projections display a positive bias,
mainly reflecting a propensity to overpredict during slowdowns; spring one-year-ahead projections are far
less informative than autumn ones; and turning points are poorly anticipated one year ahead. Regression
tests suggest that the OECD and Consensus add value to naïve forecasts for spring current-year and
autumn one-year-ahead projections.
Mots-clés: GDP, forecasts, projections, economic outlook, growth
JEL:
E37: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles / Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications;
E27: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy / Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications;
E17: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / General Aggregative Models / General Aggregative Models: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
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