Augusto Nieto-Barthaburu es Profesor Asociado e investigador en la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (UNT). Tiene un PhD en Economía por University of California, San Diego (UCSD) y es Licenciado en Economía por la UNT. Anteriormente, ha dictado cursos en UCSD, ITAM Business School (México), East Carolina University. Sus investigaciones se centran en temas de Teoría microeconómica aplicada y sus trabajos han sido publicados en revistas académicas como Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, entre otras.

ABSTRACT: Systematically biased forecasts are typically interpreted as evidence of forecasters' irrationality and/or asymmetric loss. In this paper we propose an alternative explanation: when forecasts inform policy decisions, and the resulting actions affect the realization of the forecast target itself, forecasts may be optimally biased even under quadratic loss. The result arises in environments in which the forecaster is uncertain about the policy-maker’s reaction to the forecast, which is presumably the case in most applications. We motivate our theory by reviewing some stylized properties of Greenbook inflation forecasts. Our results point out that the presence of policy feedback poses a challenge to traditional tests of forecast rationality.

AUTORES: Robert P. Lieli (Central European University) & Augusto Nieto-Barthaburu (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán)

ORGANIZARON: Departamento de Economía, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Revista Económica

CONTACTO: iie@econo.unlp.edu.ar