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Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore

This paper aims to investigate whether the predictive performance and behaviour of professional forecasters are different during the COVID-19 pandemic as compared with the global financial crisis of 2008 and normal times. To this end, we use a survey of professional forecasters in Singapore collated...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chow, Hwee Kwan, Choy, Keen Meng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9589781/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36311973
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00181-022-02311-8
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author Chow, Hwee Kwan
Choy, Keen Meng
author_facet Chow, Hwee Kwan
Choy, Keen Meng
author_sort Chow, Hwee Kwan
collection PubMed
description This paper aims to investigate whether the predictive performance and behaviour of professional forecasters are different during the COVID-19 pandemic as compared with the global financial crisis of 2008 and normal times. To this end, we use a survey of professional forecasters in Singapore collated by the central bank to analyse the forecasting records for GDP growth and CPI inflation for the period 2000Q1–2021Q4. We first examine the point forecasts to document the extent of forecast failure during the two crises and explore various explanations for it, such as leader-following and herding behaviour. Then, using percentile-based summary measures of probability distribution forecasts, we study how the degree of consensus and extent of subjective uncertainty among forecasters were affected by crisis conditions. A trend break is observed in the subjective uncertainty associated with growth projections after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. In contrast, both subjective uncertainty and the degree of consensus in inflation projections were essentially unchanged in crises, suggesting that the short-term inflation expectations of forecasters were strongly anchored.
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spelling pubmed-95897812022-10-24 Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore Chow, Hwee Kwan Choy, Keen Meng Empir Econ Article This paper aims to investigate whether the predictive performance and behaviour of professional forecasters are different during the COVID-19 pandemic as compared with the global financial crisis of 2008 and normal times. To this end, we use a survey of professional forecasters in Singapore collated by the central bank to analyse the forecasting records for GDP growth and CPI inflation for the period 2000Q1–2021Q4. We first examine the point forecasts to document the extent of forecast failure during the two crises and explore various explanations for it, such as leader-following and herding behaviour. Then, using percentile-based summary measures of probability distribution forecasts, we study how the degree of consensus and extent of subjective uncertainty among forecasters were affected by crisis conditions. A trend break is observed in the subjective uncertainty associated with growth projections after the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. In contrast, both subjective uncertainty and the degree of consensus in inflation projections were essentially unchanged in crises, suggesting that the short-term inflation expectations of forecasters were strongly anchored. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2022-10-21 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9589781/ /pubmed/36311973 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00181-022-02311-8 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Chow, Hwee Kwan
Choy, Keen Meng
Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore
title Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore
title_full Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore
title_fullStr Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore
title_full_unstemmed Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore
title_short Economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from Singapore
title_sort economic forecasting in a pandemic: some evidence from singapore
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9589781/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36311973
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00181-022-02311-8
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