Eliciting GDP Forecasts from the FOMC’s Minutes Around the Financial Crisis

Neil Ericsson

No 2015-003, Working Papers from The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting

Abstract: Stekler and Symington (2016) construct indexes that quantify the Federal Open Market Committee’s views about the U.S. economy, as expressed in the minutes of the FOMC’s meetings. These indexes provide insights on the FOMC’s deliberations, especially at the onset of the Great Recession. The current paper complements Stekler and Symington’s analysis by showing that their indexes reveal relatively minor bias in the FOMC’s views when the indexes are reinterpreted as forecasts. Additionally, these indexes provide a proximate mechanism for inferring the Fed staff’s Greenbook forecasts of the U.S. real GDP growth rate, years before the Greenbook’s public release.

Keywords: Autometrics; bias; Fed; financial crisis; FOMC; forecasts; GDP; Great Recession; Greenbook; impulse indicator saturation; projections; Tealbook; United States. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 E58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-for, nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www2.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/2015-003.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Eliciting GDP forecasts from the FOMC’s minutes around the financial crisis (2016)
Working Paper: Eliciting GDP Forecasts from the FOMC’s Minutes Around the Financial Crisis (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2015-003

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