Identifiers
The Use of Models in Producing OECD Macroeconomic Forecasts
This paper firstly describes the role of models in producing OECD global macroeconomic forecasts; secondly, reviews the OECD's forecasting track record; and finally, considers the relationship between forecast performance and models. OECD forecasts are not directly generated from a single global model, but instead rely heavily on expert judgment which is informed by inputs from a range of different models, with forecasts subjected to repeated peer review. For the major OECD economies, current year GDP growth forecasts exhibit a number of desirable properties including that they are unbiased, outperform naïve forecasts and mostly identify turning points. Moreover, there is a trend improvement in current-year forecasting performance which is partly attributed to the increasing use of high frequency ‘now-casting’ indicator models to forecast the current and next quarter’s GDP. Conversely, the track record of one-year-ahead forecasts is much less impressive; such forecasts are biased, often little bette...
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