The International Monetary Fund and the OECD are among the least successful economic forecasters according to a the Swedish central bank. Both institutions rank below average. "Overall, we find that it is often the less renowned forecasters that perform best," the Riksbank said in a study.
"Those that are often accorded considerable weight in the media, such as the IMF and the OECD, rank among the less successful forecasters."
The extensive study was based on 52,000 forecasts made by about 250 institutions between 1991 and 2000 for the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.
The study found that most forecasters did not predict the increase in growth and reduction in inflation for the world's leading economies during the second half of the 1990s.It showed inflation had repeatedly been overestimated and growth underestimated.
The IMF and the OECD have a mixed track record on Ireland, although this did not form part of the Swedish study. In common with domestic forecasters, the OECD constantly had to revise its growth figures upwards over the 1990s. It originally predicted growth in 1995 of 3.2 per cent, later revising this to 4.5 per cent and then 5.8 per cent. The eventual outcome was 9.7 per cent. The same pattern is true of most other years. For 1999, it began at 6.1 per cent and ended at 7.7 per cent. The eventual outcome was 10.8 per cent. The IMF had forecast growth of 6.8 per cent.
In 2000, it began at 6.8 per cent, ended at 10 per cent, against an outcome of 11.5 per cent. The IMF had predicted growth of 8 per cent rising to 8.7 per cent.
The OECD's latest published forecasts is for growth of 7.8 per cent this year and next, having earlier forecast growth of 5.2 per cent for this year. Growth in the first quarter was 11.6 per cent, but this is expected to fall to closer to 6 per cent by domestic analysts.
According to the Riksbank, the "prominent role as forecasters often accorded to the IMF and the OECD in the media may be unwarranted. In all six countries studied, they have both fared considerably worse than the mean" The best on German inflation are JP Morgan, Dresdner Bank and M M Warburg.
