TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lamont,Owen
TI  - Macroeconomics Forecasts and Microeconomic Forecasters
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5284
PY  - 1995
Y2  - October 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5284
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5284.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Owen Lamont
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138
E-Mail: owen.lamont@yale.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1996-01-01
AB  - In the presence of principal-agent problems, published macroeconomic forecasts by professional economists may not measure expectations.  Forecasters may use their forecasts in order to manipulate beliefs about their ability.  I test a cross-sectional implication of models of reputation and information-revelation.  I find that as forecasters become older and more established, they produce more radical forecasts.  Since these more radical forecasts are in general less accurate, ex post forecast accuracy grows significantly worse as forecasters become older and more established. These findings indicate that reputational factors are at work in professional macroeconomic forecasts.
ER  -