Evaluating Current Year Forecasts Made During the
Year: A Japanese Example
H.O. Stekler and Kazuta Sakamoto
Department of Economics
George Washington University
Washington DC 20052
RPF Working Paper No. 2008-005
http://www.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/2008-005.pdf
July 24, 2008
RESEARCH PROGRAM ON FORECASTING
Center of Economic Research
Department of Economics
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
http://www.gwu.edu/~forcpgm
Research Program on Forecasting (RPF) Working Papers represent preliminary work circulated for
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Evaluating Current Year Forecasts Made During the Year:
A Japanese Example
H.O. Stekler*
Kazuta Sakamoto
Department of Economics
George Washington University
Washington DC 20052
ABSTRACT
Forecasts for the current year that are made sometime during the current year are not true
annual forecasts because they include already known information for the early part of the year.
The current methodology that evaluates these “forecasts” does not take into account the known
information. This paper presents a methodology for calculating an implicit forecast for the latter
part of a year conditional on the known information. We then apply the procedure to Japanese
forecasts for 1988-2003 and analyze some of the characteristics of those predictions.
Running title: Implicit forecasts
Keywords: Consensus, Implicit forecasts, Japanese forecasts
* Corresponding author; email hstekler@gwu.edu
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Evaluating Current Year Forecasts Made During the Year: A Japanese Example
Many forecasts for the current year are made sometime during the current year. These
are not true annual forecasts because they include already known information for the early part
of the year. The