Consensus Economics
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Consensus Economics is a global
macroeconomic Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, an ...
survey firm that polls more than 700 economists monthly for their forecasts for over 2000 macroeconomic indicators in 115 countries. The company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.


History

Consensus Economics undertook its first survey in October 1989 and has completed monthly (and now daily) surveys without interruption since that time.


Forecasts

Consensus Economics publishes Consensus Forecasts, a widely cited monthly compilation of macroeconomic forecasts and topical analyses by country for 115 economies. The countries covered include member countries of the G-7 industrialized nations,
Asia Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pacific Isla ...
,
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
, and
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...
. It also has more specialized publications such as the Foreign Exchange forecasts and Energy & Metals Consensus Forecasts. Each publication is distributed in hard-copy format and via
email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
as
PDF files Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
and Excel spreadsheets. Once a year the company releases The Consensus Forecasts Global Outlook at the start of November, which covers long-term forecasts for countries in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America and the Asia Pacific. In addition to the forecasts made available to subscribers, Consensus Economics offers more up to date and detailed forecast data to institutional investors, to corporate planning executives and to governments and international institutions. The history of the forecasts is also licensed for research purposes.


Reports

Consensus Economics’ catalogue of publications covers 115 countries, which appear in the following regions: the G-7 nations, the Euro zone, Western Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, the Nordic countries, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe. A list of countries that make up the monthly compilations of country economic forecasts can be found below for the following publications:


Consensus Forecasts

United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Euro Zone, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Nigeria, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.


Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts

Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.


Latin America Consensus Forecasts

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.


Eastern Europe Consensus Forecasts

Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cyprus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.


Consensus Forecasts – USA

Detailed coverage of the US economy, showing forecasts for 20 macroeconomic variables. In addition, monthly forecast data is also available for currency exchange rates as well as a range of commodity prices. These appear in Foreign Exchange Consensus Forecasts and Energy and Metals Consensus Forecasts.


Foreign Exchange Consensus Forecasts

The publication provides coverage for over 90 currencies, which includes the following: US dollar, Euro, Japanese yen, Argentinian peso, Australian dollar, Brazilian real, Canadian dollar, Chilean peso, Colombian peso, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah, Israeli shekel, Malaysian ringgit, Mexican peso, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Peruvian sol, Philippine peso, Polish zloty, Romanian leu, Russian rouble, Singaporean dollar, South African rand, South Korean won, Swedish krona, Swiss franc, Taiwanese dollar, Thai baht, Turkish lira, Ukrainian hryvnia, Venezuelan bolivar, Albanian lek, Algerian dinar, Angolan kwanza, Azerbaijani manat, Bahrain dinar, Bangladesh taka, Belarusian rouble, Bolivian boliviano, Botswana pula, Bulgarian lev, Costa Rica colon, Croatian kuna, Dominican Republic peso, Ecuadorian sucre, Egyptian pound, El Salvador colon, Georgian lari, Ghanaian cedi, Guatemalan quetzal, Guyanese dollar, Haitian gourde, Honduran lempira, Icelandic krona, Iranian rial, Iraqi dinar, Ivory Coast CFA franc, Jamaican dollar, Jordanian dinar, Kazakhstani tenge, Kenyan shilling, Kuwaiti dinar, Laos kip, Lebanese pound, Libyan dinar, North Macedonian denar, Malawian kwacha, Moroccan dirham, Myanmar kyat, Nicaraguan cordoba, Nigerian naira, Oman rial, Pakistani rupee, Paraguayan guarani,
Renminbi The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 202 ...
, Saudi Arabian riyal, Serbian dinar, Sri Lankan rupee, Sterling, Sudanese pound, Syrian pound, Tanzanian shilling, Tunisian dinar, UAE dirham,
Ugandan shilling The shilling ( sw, shilingi; abbreviation: USh; ISO code: UGX) is the currency of Uganda. Officially divided into cents until 2013, due to substantial inflation the shilling now has no subdivision. Notation Prices in the Ugandan shilling ...
,
Uruguayan peso Uruguayan peso ( es, peso uruguayo) has been a name of the Uruguayan currency since Uruguay's settlement by Europeans. The present currency, the ''peso uruguayo'' (ISO 4217 code: ) was adopted in 1993 and is subdivided into 100 '' centésimos' ...
, Vietnamese dong, Yemeni rial and Zambian kwacha.


Energy and Metals Consensus Forecasts

Coverage of over 30 commodities, which includes crude oil (Brent crude as well as West Texas Intermediate crude), US gasoline & heating oil, European gas oil, natural gas (UK and US Henry Hub), coal (Australian coking coal, Australian Steaming coal spot and contract price), uranium, aluminium, alumina & aluminium alloy, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, steel (US hot rolled coil as well as Asia hot rolled coil), iron (North China fines, Australian fines, Australian lump as well as Brazilian fines), tin, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, rutile, ilmenite, zircon, gold, silver, platinum and palladium.


Current economics

Besides the publication of monthly reports of country economic forecasts, Consensus Economics also produces a monthly journal which includes articles from some of the world's leading international firms. A complete list of Consensus Economics' reports can be found on their website.


Reception


Academic research

A 2001 paper by
Roy Batchelor Roy A. Batchelor (born 23 March 1947) is Professor Emeritus in Political Economy and Statistics iBayes Business School(formerlCassCity, University of London Educated at Allan Glen's School and Glasgow University, Roy worked as a government scie ...
of
City University Business School Bayes Business School, formerly known as Cass Business School, is the business school of City, University of London, located in St Luke's, just to the north of the City of London. It was established in 1966, and it is consistently ranked as one ...
,
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
compared the Consensus Forecasts with forecasts made by the
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...
(IMF) and
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...
(OECD). The study found: "With few exceptions, the private sector forecasts are less biased and more accurate in terms of mean absolute error and root mean square error. Formal tests show these differences are statistically significant for forecasts of real growth and production, less so for forecasts of inflation and unemployment. Overall, there appears little information in the OECD and IMF forecasts that could be used to reduce significantly the error in the private sector forecasts." The accuracy and bias in the combined forecasts has been a topic of academic research. A 2009 paper by Ager, Kappler and Osterloh found: "The test for common bias reveals that several countries show biased forecasts, especially with forecasts covering more than 12 months. These results partially confirm the presumption that the macroeconomic forecasts for the past 10 years were severely affected by the pronounced shocks in that period. The fact that for individual countries systematic biases can be observed by applying the Consensus Forecasts reveals that in these countries the forecasting industry on the whole was not able to cope with the shocks specific to the past ten years. Revisions of past months for GDP growth forecasts have significant explanatory power for current revisions for almost all countries. For inflation revisions we find significant past revisions for some countries. Overall, our results imply that a lack of information efficiency is more severe for GDP forecasts than for inflation forecasts." A 2011 paper by Filip Novotny and Marie Rakova for the
Czech National Bank The Czech National Bank, ( cs, Česká národní banka, ČNB) is the central bank and financial market supervisor in the Czech Republic, headquartered in Prague. It is and a member of the European System of Central Banks. It was established on ...
compared the accuracy of the Consensus Forecasts estimates with those of the
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...
and the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...
. Echoing the result of Ager, Kappler, and Osterloh, it found: "In the period from 1994 to 2009 Consensus forecasts for effective euro-area consumer price inflation and GDP growth beat the alternatives by a difference which is typically statistically significant. The results are more diverse for the pre-crisis sample (1994–2007). The Consensus forecast for euro-area producer price inflation significantly outperforms the naïve forecast in the short-term. Finally, the Consensus forecast for the USD/EUR exchange rate during the period from 2002 to 2009 is more precise than the naïve forecast and the forecast implied by the forward rate." A 2007 paper by Batchelor used Consensus Forecasts data to consider various theories of bias in macroeconomic forecasts, and concluded: "In all countries there is evidence that individual forecasters converge on the consensus forecast too slowly. However, the persistent optimism of some forecasters, and the persistent pessimism of others, is not consistent with the predictions of models of “rational bias” that have become popular in the finance and economics literature." Consensus Forecasts data has been cited by other academic literature, such as discussion of the
Asian financial crisis The Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East Asia and Southeast Asia beginning in July 1997 and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1 ...
.


See also

*
Economic forecasting Economic forecasting is the process of making predictions about the economy. Forecasts can be carried out at a high level of aggregation—for example for GDP, inflation, unemployment or the fiscal deficit—or at a more disaggregated level, for ...
*
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries ...
, that publishes its own macroeconomic forecasts *
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...
, that publishes its own global macroeconomic forecasts *
Blue Chip Economic Indicators Blue Chip Economic Indicators is a monthly survey and associated publication by Wolters Kluwer collecting macroeconomic forecasts related to the economy of the United States. The survey polls America's top business economists, collecting their f ...
, that publishes macroeconomic forecasts for the
economy of the United States The United States is a highly developed mixed-market economy and has the world's largest nominal GDP and net wealth. It has the second-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) behind China. It has the world's seventh-highest per capita GD ...
*
Survey of Professional Forecasters The Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) is a quarterly survey of macroeconomic forecasts for the economy of the United States issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. It is the oldest such survey in the United States. The survey i ...
, that publishes macroeconomic forecasts for the
economy of the United States The United States is a highly developed mixed-market economy and has the world's largest nominal GDP and net wealth. It has the second-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) behind China. It has the world's seventh-highest per capita GD ...
*
ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters The ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters, simply called the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), is a quarterly survey of macroeconomic forecasts for the economy of Europe issued by the European Central Bank (ECB). History The ECB Survey ...
, that publishes macroeconomic forecasts for the
Eurozone The euro area, commonly called eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 19 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU policies ...


References


External links

* {{official website Economic forecasting International macroeconomics Publishing companies based in London