Abstract/Summary

Past analyses of surveys of professional forecasters’ histogram and point forecasts indicate that the two are not always consistent. The point forecasts are either systematically higher or lower than the corresponding histogram means, depending on whether we consider inflation or GDP growth. We consider whether inconsistencies are related to delayed updating of the histogram forecasts, or to the reaction of the two types of forecasts to new information, and whether inconsistent pairs typically imply less accurate point or histogram forecasts. We also re-consider explanations related to the complexity of the task on an extended dataset.