Consensus Economics has monitored research projects involving economic forecast data for some years. This work was intensified in 2004 and 2005 when in-house studies were undertaken of the academic literature on forecasting, the behaviour of forecasters during the forecast cycle and the responses of forecasters to our survey methodology. Using our database of historical forecast data collected since 1989 we also investigated the characteristics of this data to determine whether the accuracy of the consensus could be statistically improved.
This research has led to the development of an Econometric Adjusted Consensus (EAC) which we are using in our analysis and making available to clients of our Excel Spreadsheet service. For further information about the EAC and a discussion of its advantages, Excel Spreadsheet subscribers should contact us on Tel: + 44 (20) 7491 3211.