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An assessment of the EU growth forecasts under asymmetric preferences

✍ Scribed by George A. Christodoulakis; Emmanuel C. Mamatzakis


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
2008
Tongue
English
Weight
117 KB
Volume
27
Category
Article
ISSN
0277-6693

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✦ Synopsis


Abstract

EU Commission forecasts are used as a benchmark within the framework of the Stability and Growth Pact, aimed at providing a prudential view of economic outlook, especially for member states in an Excessive Deficit Procedure. Following Elliott et al. (2005), we assess whether there exist asymmetries in the loss preference of the Commission's GDP growth forecasts from 1969 to 2004. Our empirical evidence is robust across information sets and reveals that the loss preferences tend to show some variation in terms of asymmetry across member states. Given certain conditions concerning the time horizon of forecasts and the functional form of the loss preferences, the evidence further reveals that the Commission forecasting exercise could be subject to caveats. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.