Internal consistency of survey respondents’ forecasts: evidence based on the Survey of Professional Forecasters

We ask whether the different types of forecasts made by individual survey respondents are mutually consistent, using the SPF survey data. We compare the point forecasts and central tendencies of probability distributions matched by individual respondent, and compare the forecast probabilities of declines in output with the probabilities implied by the probability distributions. When the expected associations between these different types of forecasts do not hold for some individuals, we consider whether the discrepancies we observe are consistent with rational behaviour by agents with asymmetric loss functions