Evaluating Wall Street Journal survey forecasters: a multivariate approach

Business Economics, July, 2002 by Robert Eisenbeis, Daniel Waggoner, Tao Zha

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Bevin Janci provided invaluable research assistance in gathering and organizing the data used in this article.

(1.) In some instances, data are revised. The tables here include the real-time data available to the Journal at the time the evaluations were made.

REFERENCES

Eisenbeis, Robert A., and Robert B. Avery. 1973. "Two Aspects of Investigating Group Differences in Linear Discriminant Analysis." Decision Sciences. Vol 4. Pp. 487-493.

Robertson, John C., and Ellis W. Tallman. 1999. "Vector Autoregressions: Forecasting and Reality." Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Economic Review. 84, First Quarter. Pp. 4-18.

Waggoner, Daniel F., and Tao Zha, 1999. "Conditional Forecasts in Dynamic Multivariate Models." Review of Economies and Statistics. 81, 4, November. Pp. 639-651.

The three authors are with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Robert Eisenbeis is senior vice president anti director of research. In addition to advising the Bank president on monetary policy and related matters, he oversees the research, public affairs and statistical reports departments. Before joining the Atlanta Fed, he was the at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his B.A. from Brown University and both his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Tao Zha is an assistant vice president in the macropolicy group in the research department. Prior to joining the Bank, he was an with the University of Saskatchewan and the People's Bank of China. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, his M.A. from Washington State University, another M.A. from the Sichuan Institute of Economics and Finance, and a B.A. from the Chengdu College of Geology.

Daniel Waggoner is a research economist and assistant policy advisor in the Finance group in the research department. Prior to joining the Bank, he was with Agnes Scott College and Lehigh University. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Kentucky. His B.A. is from the University of Mississippi, and he has another M.A. from Georgia State University.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta or the Federal Reserve System.