Conservatism and consensus‐seeking among economic forecasters

Abstract

Abstract This paper uses the track records of a panel of US economic forecasters participating in a consensus forecasting service to test for conservatism and consensus‐seeking behaviour. The tests are based on a particular method‐of‐moments estimator, designed to allow for the heteroscedasticity and serial correlation which is inevitably present in errors from repeated forecasts for fixed target dates. Most forecasters prove to be conservative. When revising forecasts they give too much weight to their own past forecasts. Surprisingly, forecasters are not consensus‐seeking but ‘variety‐seeking’. When revising forecasts, they give too little weight to the known forecasts of other forecasters.