Discussion Paper
No. 2016-29 | June 29, 2016
Víctor López-Pérez
Does Uncertainty Affect Non-response to the European Central Bank’s Survey of Professional Forecasters?
(Published in Recent Developments in Applied Economics)

Abstract

This paper explores how changes in macroeconomic uncertainty have affected the decision to reply to the European Central Bank’s Survey of Professional Forecasters (ECB’s SPF). The results suggest that higher (lower) aggregate uncertainty increases (reduces) non-response to the survey. This effect is statistically and economically significant. Therefore, the assumption that individual ECB’s SPF data are missing at random may not be appropriate. Moreover, the forecasters that perceive more individual uncertainty seem to have a lower likelihood of replying to the survey. Consequently, measures of uncertainty computed from individual ECB’s SPF data could be biased downwards.

Data Set

JEL Classification:

D81, D84, E66

Links

Cite As

[Please cite the corresponding journal article] Víctor López-Pérez (2016). Does Uncertainty Affect Non-response to the European Central Bank’s Survey of Professional Forecasters? Economics Discussion Papers, No 2016-29, Kiel Institute for the World Economy. http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2016-29


Comments and Questions



Anonymous - Referee Report
July 25, 2016 - 09:29
see attached file

Víctor López-Pérez - Reply to referee
July 25, 2016 - 10:39
Dear referee, Thank you very much for your detailed comments and suggestions. I think you are right in all of them and I believe they will help improve my paper significantly. I am going to start working on a revised version of the paper that includes your comments. />Kind regards and thanks again. Víctor.

Anonymous - Comment
July 25, 2016 - 09:31
It would be interesting to compare your main findings with other published papers (only the more relevant on the topic).

Víctor López-Pérez - Reply to comment
July 25, 2016 - 10:45
Thanks for your comment on my paper. The thing is that, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first attempt to investigate the determinants of response to the Survey of Professional Forecasters. If you are aware of other papers that touch on this issue, please let me know. I would be happy to cite them in my paper. Kind regards, Víctor.