A Balanced Approach
For several decades, journalists and researchers have been collecting and combining economic and financial forecasts using surveys. For our Consensus Forecasts™ publications we ask the world's leading forecasters for their predictions for more than 1,000 variables from over 85 nations in Industrialised Countries, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Incoming survey responses are then processed using proprietary software and checked for accuracy, completeness and integrity. For the principal countries covered, our publications show the estimates of individual panellists for each economic indicator, along with the mean average.
The table below shows a small sample of the data from Consensus Forecasts™ for the United States (in this case, from our July 9, 2012 survey).
| Forecasters For The United States |
Gross Domestic Product |
Consumer Price Inflation |
||
| % change over previous year | 2012 | 2013 | 2012 | 2013 |
| American Int'l Group | 2.5 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 0.6 |
| Econ Intelligence Unit | 2.2 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 |
| RDQ Economics | 2.2 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 2.8 |
| Ford Motor Company | 2.2 | 2.7 | 2.0 | 1.8 |
| Barclays Capital | 2.2 | 2.1 | 1.9 | 2.1 |
| Credit Suisse | 2.2 | 2.5 | 1.8 | 1.1 |
| Swiss Re | 2.2 | 2.7 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| Nat Assn of Home Builders | 2.1 | 2.5 | 2.4 | 2.0 |
| Moody Analytics | 2.1 | 2.6 | 1.8 | 2.0 |
| Citigroup | 2.1 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 1.9 |
| Du Pont | 2.1 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| Fannie Mae | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| First Trust Advisors | 2.1 | 3.3 | 2.2 | 3.6 |
| Inforum - Univ of Maryland | 2.1 | 1.7 | 1.9 | 2.2 |
| Morgan Stanley | 2.1 | 1.6 | 1.9 | 1.5 |
| UBS | 2.1 | 2.6 | 2.0 | 1.8 |
| Wells Capital Mgmt | 2.1 | 2.5 | 2.1 | 2.3 |
| JP Morgan | 2.1 | 2.0 | 1.9 | 1.6 |
| General Motors | 2.1 | 2.6 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| Macroeconomic Advisors | 2.1 | 2.6 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| Standard & Poor's | 2.0 | 2.1 | 1.7 | 1.2 |
| IHS Global Insight | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.7 | 1.3 |
| Goldman Sachs | 2.0 | 1.9 | 2.1 | 1.7 |
| Eaton Corporation | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.0 |
| The Conference Board | 1.9 | 1.9 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| Wells Fargo | 1.9 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.6 |
| Georgia State University | 1.8 | 1.7 | 2.4 | 1.7 |
| Consensus (Average) | 2.1 | 2.3 | 2.0 | 1.9 |
| Last Month's Mean | 2.2 | 2.4 | 2.2 | 2.0 |
| 3 Months Ago | 2.3 | 2.5 | 2.3 | 2.1 |
| High | 2.5 | 3.3 | 2.5 | 3.6 |
| Low | 1.8 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 0.6 |
| Standard Deviation | 0.1 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0.5 |