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Testing Forecast Rationality for Measures of Central Tendency

Timo Dimitriadis, Andrew J. Patton, Patrick W. Schmidt

arXiv 28 Oct 2019 · Econometrics · publishedThe Review of Economics and Statistics (2019) · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1910.12545 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Rational respondents to economic surveys may report as a point forecast any measure of the central tendency of their (possibly latent) predictive distribution, for example the mean, median, mode, or any convex combination thereof. We propose tests of forecast rationality when the measure of central tendency used by the respondent is unknown. We overcome an identification problem that arises when the measures of central tendency are equal or in a local neighborhood of each other, as is the case for (exactly or nearly) symmetric distributions. As a building block, we also present novel tests for the rationality of mode forecasts. We apply our tests to income forecasts from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Survey of Consumer Expectations. We find these forecasts are rationalizable as mode forecasts, but not as mean or median forecasts. We also find heterogeneity in the measure of centrality used by respondents when stratifying the sample by past income, age, job stability, and survey experience.

Citation extraction

73
references
158
in-text mentions
73
distinct cited
4
self-citations
32,661
main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Elliott, G., Komunjer, I., and Timmermann, A (2005) Estimation and testing of forecast rationality under flexible loss1.000176100%
2Kemp, G. C. and Silva, J. S (2012) Regression towards the mode1.00074100%
3Kemp, G. C., Parente, P. M., and Silva, J. S (2020) Dynamic vector mode regression1.00074100%
4Gneiting, T (2011) Making and evaluating point forecasts1.00073100%
5Davidson, J (1994) Stochastic Limit Theory: An Introduction for Econometricians1.00073100%
6Stock, J. H. and Wright, J. H (2000) GMM with weak identification1.00064100%
7Heinrich, C (2014) The mode functional is not elicitable0.92843100%
8Kim, G. and Binder, C (2023) Learning-through-survey in inflation expectations0.92843100%
9Mincer, J. and Zarnowitz, V (1969) The Evaluation of Economic Forecasts0.84333100%
10Reifschneider, D. and Tulip, P (2019) Gauging the uncertainty of the economic outlook using historical forecasting errors: The Federal Reserve's approach0.84333100%

Showing the top 10 of 73 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1The Efficiency Gap0.40511
2Generalised Covariances and Correlations0.40511
3Characterizing M-estimators0.00011