Consensus Economics is a global macroeconomic survey firm that polls more than 700 economists monthly for their forecasts for over 2000 macroeconomic indicators in 115 countries.[1][2] The company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Consensus Economics undertook its first survey in October 1989 and now releases monthly and weekly survey results.[1][3]
Forecasts
Consensus Economics publishes Consensus Forecasts, a widely cited monthly compilation of macroeconomic forecasts and topical analyses by country for 115 economies.[1][2] The countries covered include member countries of the G-7 industrialized nations, Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.[2] It also has more specialized publications such as the Foreign Exchange forecasts and Energy & Metals Consensus Forecasts.[2] Each publication is distributed in hard-copy format and via email as PDF files and Excel spreadsheets.[2] Once a year the company releases The Consensus Forecasts Global Outlook at the start of November, which covers long-term forecasts, including 2050 forecasts, for countries in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America and the Asia Pacific.
In addition to the forecasts made available to subscribers, Consensus Economics offers more up to date and detailed forecast data to institutional investors,[3] to corporate planning executives and to governments and international institutions. The history of the forecasts is also licensed for research purposes.
Reports
Consensus Economics’ catalogue of publications covers 115 countries, which appear in the following regions: the G-7 nations, the Euro zone, Western Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, the Nordic countries, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe. A list of countries that make up the monthly compilations of country economic forecasts can be found below for the following publications:
Consensus Forecasts
United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom,[4] Italy, Canada,[5] Euro Zone, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt,[6] Finland, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Nigeria, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Detailed coverage of the US economy, showing forecasts for 20 macroeconomic variables.
In addition, monthly forecast data is also available for currency exchange rates as well as a range of commodity prices. These appear in Foreign Exchange Consensus Forecasts and Energy and Metals Consensus Forecasts.
Foreign Exchange Consensus Forecasts
The publication provides coverage for over 90 currencies, which includes the following: US dollar, Euro, Japanese yen, Argentinian peso, Australian dollar, Brazilian real, Canadian dollar, Chilean peso, Colombian peso, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah, Israeli shekel, Malaysian ringgit, Mexican peso, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Peruvian sol, Philippine peso, Polish zloty, Romanian leu, Russian rouble, Singaporean dollar, South African rand, South Korean won, Swedish krona, Swiss franc, Taiwanese dollar, Thai baht, Turkish lira, Ukrainian hryvnia, Venezuelan bolivar, Albanian lek, Algerian dinar, Angolan kwanza, Azerbaijani manat, Bahrain dinar, Bangladesh taka, Belarusian rouble, Bolivian boliviano, Bosnia Herz. Marka, Botswana pula, Bulgarian lev, Costa Rica colon, Croatian kuna, Dominican Republic peso, Eyptian pound, Ecuadorian sucre, Egyptian pound, El Salvador colon, Georgian lari, Ghanaian cedi, Guatemalan quetzal, Guyanese dollar, Haitian gourde, Honduran lempira, Icelandic krona, Iranian rial, Iraqi dinar, Ivory Coast CFA franc, Jamaican dollar, Jordanian dinar, Kazakhstani tenge, Kenyan shilling, Kuwaiti dinar, Laos kip, Lebanese pound, Libyan dinar, Macedonian denar, Malawian kwacha, Moroccan dirham, Mozambican metical, Myanmar kyat, Nicaraguan cordoba, Nigerian naira, Oman rial, Pakistani rupee, Paraguayan guarani, Renminbi, Saudi Arabian riyal, Serbian dinar, Sri Lankan rupee, Sterling, Sudanese pound, Tanzanian shilling, Tunisian dinar, UAE dirham, Ugandan shilling, Uruguayan peso, Uzbekistani som, Vietnamese dong and Zambian kwacha.
Energy and Metals Consensus Forecasts
Coverage of over 30 commodities, which includes crude oil (Brent crude as well as West Texas Intermediate crude), US gasoline & heating oil, European gas oil, natural gas (UK and US Henry Hub), coal (Australian coking coal, Australian Steaming coal spot and contract price), uranium, carbon, aluminium, alumina & aluminium alloy, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, steel (US hot rolled coil as well as Asia hot rolled coil), iron ore (North China fines, Australian fines, Australian lump as well as Brazilian fines), tin, cobalt, lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium spodumene, manganese, molybdenum, rutile, ilmenite, zircon, gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
Current economics
Besides the publication of monthly reports of country economic forecasts, Consensus Economics also produces a monthly journal which includes articles from some of the world's leading international firms.
A complete list of Consensus Economics' reports can be found on their website.[7]
Reception
Academic research
A 2001 paper by Roy Batchelor of City University Business School, London compared the Consensus Forecasts with forecasts made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).[8][9] The study found: "With few exceptions, the private sector forecasts are less biased and more accurate in terms of mean absolute error and root mean square error. Formal tests show these differences are statistically significant for forecasts of real growth and production, less so for forecasts of inflation and unemployment. Overall, there appears little information in the OECD and IMF forecasts that could be used to reduce significantly the error in the private sector forecasts."[8][9]
The accuracy and bias in the combined forecasts has been a topic of academic research. A 2009 paper by Ager, Kappler and Osterloh found: "The test for common bias reveals that several countries show biased forecasts, especially with forecasts covering more than 12 months. These results partially confirm the presumption that the macroeconomic forecasts for the past 10 years were severely affected by the pronounced shocks in that period. The fact that for individual countries systematic biases can be observed by applying the Consensus Forecasts reveals that in these countries the forecasting industry on the whole was not able to cope with the shocks specific to the past ten years. Revisions of past months for GDP growth forecasts have significant explanatory power for current revisions for almost all countries. For inflation revisions we find significant past revisions for some countries. Overall, our results imply that a lack of information efficiency is more severe for GDP forecasts than for inflation forecasts."[10][11]
A 2011 paper by Filip Novotny and Marie Rakova for the Czech National Bank compared the accuracy of the Consensus Forecasts estimates with those of the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Echoing the result of Ager, Kappler, and Osterloh, it found: "In the period from 1994 to 2009 Consensus forecasts for effective euro-area consumer price inflation and GDP growth beat the alternatives by a difference which is typically statistically significant. The results are more diverse for the pre-crisis sample (1994–2007). The Consensus forecast for euro-area producer price inflation significantly outperforms the naïve forecast in the short-term. Finally, the Consensus forecast for the USD/EUR exchange rate during the period from 2002 to 2009 is more precise than the naïve forecast and the forecast implied by the forward rate."[12]
A 2007 paper by Batchelor used Consensus Forecasts data to consider various theories of bias in macroeconomic forecasts, and concluded: "In all countries there is evidence that individual forecasters converge on the consensus forecast too slowly. However, the persistent optimism of some forecasters, and the persistent pessimism of others, is not consistent with the predictions of models of “rational bias” that have become popular in the finance and economics literature."[13]
Consensus Forecasts data has been cited by other academic literature, such as discussion of the Asian financial crisis.[14]
In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as they usually switch to more stable foreign currencies. When measured in stable foreign currencies, prices typically remain stable. Effective capital controls and currency substitution (“dollarization”) are the orthodox solutions to ending short-term hyperinflation; however there are significant social and economic costs to these policies. Ineffective implementations of these solutions often exacerbate the situation. Many governments choose to attempt to solve structural issues without resorting to those solutions, with the goal of bringing inflation down slowly while minimizing social costs of further economic shocks.
In economics, inflation is a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy. This is usually measured using the consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduction in the purchasing power of money. The opposite of CPI inflation is deflation, a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. The common measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index. As prices faced by households do not all increase at the same rate, the consumer price index (CPI) is often used for this purpose.
Currency substitution is the use of a foreign currency in parallel to or instead of a domestic currency.
Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to affect monetary and other financial conditions to accomplish broader objectives like high employment and price stability. Further purposes of a monetary policy may be to contribute to economic stability or to maintain predictable exchange rates with other currencies. Today most central banks in developed countries conduct their monetary policy within an inflation targeting framework, whereas the monetary policies of most developing countries' central banks target some kind of a fixed exchange rate system. A third monetary policy strategy, targeting the money supply, was widely followed during the 1980s, but has diminished in popularity since that, though it is still the official strategy in a number of emerging economies.
Economic data are data describing an actual economy, past or present. These are typically found in time-series form, that is, covering more than one time period or in cross-sectional data in one time period. Data may also be collected from surveys of for example individuals and firms or aggregated to sectors and industries of a single economy or for the international economy. A collection of such data in table form comprises a data set.
The Mexican peso crisis was a currency crisis sparked by the Mexican government's sudden devaluation of the peso against the U.S. dollar in December 1994, which became one of the first international financial crises ignited by capital flight.
The 1998–2002 Argentine great depression was an economic depression in Argentina, which began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted until the second quarter of 2002. It followed fifteen years of stagnation and a brief period of free-market reforms. The depression, which began after the Russian and Brazilian financial crises, caused widespread unemployment, riots, the fall of the government, a default on the country's foreign debt, the rise of alternative currencies and the end of the peso's fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. The economy shrank by 28 per cent from 1998 to 2002. In terms of income, over 50 per cent of Argentines lived below the official poverty line and 25 per cent were indigent ; seven out of ten Argentine children were poor at the depth of the crisis in 2002.
Economic forecasting is the process of making predictions about the economy. Forecasts can be carried out at a high level of aggregation—for example for GDP, inflation, unemployment or the fiscal deficit—or at a more disaggregated level, for specific sectors of the economy or even specific firms. Economic forecasting is a measure to find out the future prosperity of a pattern of investment and is the key activity in economic analysis. Many institutions engage in economic forecasting: national governments, banks and central banks, consultants and private sector entities such as think-tanks, companies and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the OECD. A broad range of forecasts are collected and compiled by "Consensus Economics". Some forecasts are produced annually, but many are updated more frequently.
International economics is concerned with the effects upon economic activity from international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the international institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and transaction.
Chronic inflation is an economic phenomenon occurring when a country experiences high inflation for a prolonged period due to continual increases in the money supply among other things. In countries with chronic inflation, inflation expectations become 'built-in', and it becomes extremely difficult to reduce the inflation rate because the process of reducing inflation by, for example, slowing down the growth rate of the money supply, will often lead to high unemployment until inflationary expectations have adjusted to the new situation.
Probabilistic forecasting summarizes what is known about, or opinions about, future events. In contrast to single-valued forecasts, probabilistic forecasts assign a probability to each of a number of different outcomes, and the complete set of probabilities represents a probability forecast. Thus, probabilistic forecasting is a type of probabilistic classification.
Roque Benjamín Fernández is an Argentine economist, former President of the Central Bank and Minister of Economy, and the only member of the Chicago Boys ever to have been the chief economic policy maker in Argentina.
The Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) is a quarterly survey of macroeconomic forecasts for the economy of the United States issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. It is the oldest such survey in the United States.
A consensus forecast is a prediction of the future created by combining several separate forecasts which have often been created using different methodologies. They are used in a number of sciences, ranging from econometrics to meteorology, and are also known as combining forecasts, forecast averaging or model averaging and committee machines, ensemble averaging or expert aggregation.
Blue Chip Economic Indicators is a monthly survey and associated publication by Wolters Kluwer collecting macroeconomic forecasts related to the economy of the United States. The survey polls America's top business economists, collecting their forecasts of U.S. economic growth, inflation, interest rates, and a host of other critical indicators of future business activity. It has a sister publication called Blue Chip Financial Forecasts, which surveys forecasts of the future direction and level of U.S. interest rates.
Economic Outlook is a twice-yearly analysis published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with economic analysis and forecasts for future economic performance of OECD countries. The main version is in English, and it is also published in French and German. The OECD also publishes Monthly Economic Indicators to complement the twice-yearly Economic Outlook.
OECD Main Economic Indicators, often simply called Main Economic Indicators and abbreviated MEI, is a monthly publication by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of economic indicators worldwide. According to the official website, it "presents comparative statistics that provide an overview of recent international economic developments." The publication is available online at the OECD iLibrary.
The Greenbook of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is a book with projections of various economic indicators for the economy of the United States produced by the Federal Reserve Board before each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. The projections are referred to as Greenbook projections or Greenbook forecasts. Many of the variables projected coincide with variables covered in the Survey of Professional Forecasters.
Nicoletta Batini is an Italian economist, notable as a scholar of innovative monetary and fiscal policy practices. During the crisis she pioneered the IMF work exposing the dangers of excessive fiscal austerity and designed ways to consolidate public debt successfully during phases of financial deleveraging. Since 2003 at the International Monetary Fund, she has served as Advisor of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee between 2000-2003 and was Professor of Economics at the University of Surrey (2007-2012), and Director of the International Economics and Policy office of the Department of the Treasury of Italy's Ministero dell’Economia e delle Finanze (MEF) between 2013-2015. Batini's fields of expertise include monetary policy, public finance, open economy macroeconomics, labor economics, energy and environmental economics, and economic modeling. She has handled extensive consultancy roles in the public sector in advanced and emerging market countries. She holds a Ph.D. in international finance from the Scuola Superiore S. Anna and a Ph.D. in monetary economics from the University of Oxford.
The Asian Development Outlook is an annual publication produced by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It offers economic analysis and forecasts, as well as an examination of social development issues, for most countries in Asia. It is published each March/April with an update published in September and brief supplements published in July and December. The publication is prepared by staff of ADB's regional departments, and field offices, under the coordination of the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department with the goal of developing "consistent forecasts for the region".
1 2 Batchelor, Roy (2001). "How useful are the forecasts of intergovernmental agencies? The IMF and OECD versus the consensus". Applied Economics. 33 (2): 225–235. doi:10.1080/00036840121785.
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