Feb 2nd 2011, 19:30 by The Economist online
What our polls forecasted for 2010 GDP growth and inflation
EVERY month The Economist surveys a group of forecasters and gives the average of their predictions for economic growth, consumer prices and current-account balances for 13 countries and the euro area (see this month's poll). These charts show our pollsters' monthly 2010 growth and inflation predictions, for America, Japan and the euro area, since March 2009. The gap between the most optimistic and pessimistic forecasts shrinks as actual data become available. In June 2009, for example, bears reckoned America's economy would decline slightly; bulls saw growth at 2.8%. By the end of 2010 the gap was only 0.2 percentage points. Official data (typically released a few months after the year end) generally match our consensus forecasts, though some outliers distort the average.
On this blog we publish a new chart or map every working day, highlight our interactive-data features and provide links to interesting sources of data around the web.
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what about the median of the forecasts? the median is not affected by outliers..
It is most striking that the spread of forecasts (so left as opposed to right on the graph - the latter being largely outcomes) is vast. Indeed on a scale of the remotely possible (-2-+5% say) the error is almost half.
This is indeed better than a throw of a single die would have been. It is about what one would get from the sum of two thrown dice. But the dice would be quicker, arguably more fun and lot cheaper...
Looks like an opportunity for arbitrage.
Next time, I say we short the optimists, go long on the pessimists, and make money on the convergence at year end.
The usual dilemma that people come up with to see where one stands on economic issues, is whether you prefer a sound budget over growth or growth over a sound budget?
It seems America prefers neither one.
Where are all the people who think the US will have economic decline again very shortly?
There is no possibility of that economy to grow over the next year, the only reason it is not declining an annual 5% is that it is being held on artificial economic life support. Money is being borrowed and money printed into the economy. This is not growth, its inflation.
Actual economic growth is occuring in places like Germany, where manufacturing, production and actual value creation is occuring, not only paper money financial creation.
In Germany unemplyment have declined from around 9% a few years before the economic crisis, and kept declinging through the economic crisis, and still declining, to its current level of just above 6%. Now that is economic growth.
I swear, if not all these economist are nothing more than broken alarm clocks, they either wake you up too early or too late.
The most interesting would be the comparison with the real data to appreciate the optimistic/pessimistic of forecasters and the bias of those predictions