Briefing

Battle of the Forecasts: Mean vs. Median as the Survey of Professional Forecasters’ Consensus

Abstract: In this Research Brief, we study whether the accuracy of the median forecast in fact exceeds that of the mean forecast. Because we want the results of our study to be as robust as possible, we examine the forecasts for six important survey variables over five forecast horizons, using four alternative measures of the realizations from which we compute the forecast errors, and four alternative sample periods. We apply the well-known Diebol?Mariano (1995) statistical test for relative forecast accuracy between the mean and median consensus projections.

Keywords: median forecast; mean forecast;

https://doi.org/10.21799/frbp.rb.2018.dec

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Part of Series: Research Brief

Publication Date: 2018

Issue: Q4

Order Number: 1