FOMC Forecasts: Is all the Information in the Central Tendency?

Abstract

Federal Reserve policymakers began reporting their economic forecasts to Congress in 1979.These forecasts are important because they indicate what the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members think will be the likely consequence of their policies.The Fed reports both the range (high and low) of the individual policymaker's forecasts and a truncated central tendency.The central tendency range omits outliers from both the top and the bottom of the full range.Generally, I find that the forecasts derived from the full range are at least as good as those derived from the central tendency and in a few cases, significantly better.

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