TY  - JOUR
AU  - Engelberg,Joseph
AU  - Manski,Charles F.
AU  - Williams,Jared
TI  - Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11978
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11978
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11978.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Joseph Engelberg
Finance Department
University of California at San Diego
E-Mail: jengelberg@ucsd.edu

Charles F. Manski
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL  60208
Tel: 847/491-8223
Fax: 847/491-7001
E-Mail: cfmanski@northwestern.edu
AB  - We use data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to compare point forecasts of GDP growth and inflation with the subjective probability distributions held by forecasters. We find that SPF forecasters summarize their underlying distributions in different ways and that their summaries tend to be favorable relative to the central tendency of the underlying distributions. We also find that those forecasters who report favorable point estimates in the current survey tend to do so in subsequent surveys. These findings, plus the inescapable fact that point forecasts reveal nothing about the uncertainty that forecasters feel, suggest that the SPF and similar surveys should not ask for point forecasts. It seems more reasonable to elicit probabilistic expectations and derive measures of central tendency and uncertainty, as we do here.
ER  -