Macroeconomics Commons^™

Economic Forecasting In Singapore: The Covid-19 Experience, Hwee Kwan Chow-Tan, Keen Meng Choy

Research Collection School Of Economics

This Special Feature considers how accurately professional forecasters have predicted GDP growth and inflation in Singapore, especially during rare events such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19. It also illustrates the value of forecast probability distributions in inferring forecasters’ uncertainty when making predictions, and the degree of consensus between projections from different forecasters. The authors find that one-year ahead forecast errors for GDP growth and inflation increased during the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic. While professional forecasters did not appear to have followed the Government’s forecasts when predicting growth during the GFC, they may have exhibited ”leader-following” behaviour …