An Evaluation of the World Economic Outlook Forecasts

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Abstract: This paper conducts a series of statistical tests to evaluate the quality of the World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecasts for a very large cross section of countries. It assesses whether forecasts were unbiased and informationally efficient, characterizes the process whereby WEO forecasts get revised as the predicted period draws closer, and compares the precision of the WEO forecasts to private sector forecasts known as "consensus forecasts" and published by Consensus Economics on a monthly basis. The results suggest that the performance of the WEO forecasts is similar to that of the consensus forecasts. [JEL E17, E37, F17, F47]