How accurate are OECD forecasts?

By Brian Keeley. If you’re a regular visitor to the blog, you’ll know we often report on the latest OECD economic forecasts. After reading these, you may have found yourself asking this question: Is this really what’s going to happen? You’re not alone. The OECD’s economists, too, have been asking themselves the same question, and today they offered some answers.
In a “post-mortem” project, the OECD examined the accuracy of the economic forecasts it issued between 2007 and 2012, a period of seemingly endless economic turbulence. The study reports that, in general, the OECD tended to be too optimistic – it didn’t predict the scale of the collapse in economic activity between 2008-09 and then overestimated the speed of the subsequent recovery. More...