Catching a Floating Treasure: A Genuine Ex-Ante Forecasting Experiment in Real Time

Abstract

Forecasting real economic activity poses a considerable challenge not only due to hard-to-predict events like the current financial crisis but also due to the fact that targeted variables often undergo significant revisions after their first publication. In this paper we report the results of a genuine ex-ante forecasting experiment in real time. It highlights the difficulties of hitting a moving target and shows that in a realistic setting linear models in combination with survey data perform as good as much more sophisticated approaches.