In the last few years State forecasts on the trend of the Italian economy they have become more accurate. This was revealed by a historical analysis of the macroeconomic forecasts of the Ministry of Economy and the Parliamentary Budget Office (UPB) published on Thursday. The study focuses on the estimates contained in the government planning documents (Economics and Finance Document and related Update Note) in the period in which the PBO carried out the validation exercises (from 2014 to the present), comparing them with those relating to the previous period and with the estimates made by other forecasters.
In the period in which the UPB operated, the MEF's forecasts "became more balanced, especially on real GDP - reads the analysis - The accuracy of the estimates, referring to the size of errors, has improved in the second half of the last decade, although there is still room for further improvement for nominal GDP, especially over longer horizons”.
In particular, "the forecasts of the Upb were slightly more cautious than those of the Mef, similarly to those of the European Commission, which however are characterized by an excess of pessimism for the current year”, continues the text.
The same focus also shows that, over the last seven years, the gap between official forecasts and those of private analysts has also narrowed.
On the other hand, the analysts of the UPB admit that "the number of observations available is limited, also because it is necessary to eliminate from the sample the years characterized by anomalous shocks, such as that of the pandemic".
Consequently, "more refined inferential statistical evaluations are not possible at the moment: more solid analyzes could be carried out in the future, when longer historical series are available".
