Abstract:
Economic forecasts taken into account during the European Semester are getting an increasing role in macroeconomic policy decisions. The main motivation for this paper is to analyse the performance of national, international and private agencies in forecasting the government deficit as a ratio to GDP for Italy from 1992 to 2012. Extending the existing methodology and using an innovative database, this paper finds that the accuracy of the forecasts depend on the month in which the forecasts are realized and on the nature of the institution making the economic forecasts (i.e. public or private).
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