Abstract
One of the important roles of private research institutes in analyzing economic trends and forecasting the economy is to produce highly accurate forecasts of economic growth rate and price inflation rate. The average error in forecasting Real GDP growth rate by private research institutes for 43 years from FY 1980 to FY 2022 is 1.33% (mean absolute error). The actual values are often out of the forecast range (maximum to minimum value of the forecasts), but compared to the government economic outlook, the forecast errors of private research institutes are smaller. Although judgments regarding economic turning points tend to be delayed, there is a tendency for forecasts to move up during periods of economic expansion and move down during periods of economic re-cession. Therefore, the direction of revision of forecasts can be useful information in determining the turning point of the economy.
With changes in socioeconomic conditions, it has become necessary to develop forecasts in a short period of time after accurately grasping the current economic trends. In addition, the fore-casting period has been extended earlier than in the past, and the forecast period has become longer.
In recent years, the need for a more rapid grasp of current economic trends has increased due to an increase in the number of cases in which the economy has fluctuated significantly in a short period of time, and analysis using conventional macroeconomic statistics alone is no longer sufficient to deal with this situation. Against this backdrop, alternative data has become increasingly useful, but there are also data constraints that pose many challenges for its use in continuous economic analysis. If the Cabinet Office were to publish monthly GDP, it could contribute to a quick and accurate assessment of economic trends.
