Abstract This paper investigates the macroeconomic projections of the German government since the 1970s and compares it to those of the Joint Economic Forecast, which is an independent forecasting institution in Germany. Our results indicate that both nominal GDP projections are upward biased for longer forecast horizons, which seems to be driven by a false assessment of the decline in Germany’s trend growth and a systematic failure to correctly anticipate recessions. Furthermore, we show that the German government deviates from the projections of the Joint Economic Forecast, which in fact worsened the forecast accuracy. Finally, we find evidence that these deviations are driven by political motives.

中文翻译：

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德国政府的宏观经济预测：与独立预测机构的比较

摘要本文研究了自1970年代以来德国政府的宏观经济预测，并将其与联合经济预测（联合经济预测）进行了比较，后者是德国的独立预测机构。我们的结果表明，对于较长的预测范围，两种名义GDP预测都存在偏差，这似乎是由于对德国趋势增长下降的错误评估以及正确预测衰退的系统性失败所致。此外，我们表明德国政府偏离了《联合经济预测》的预测，这实际上使预测准确性恶化。最后，我们发现证据表明这些偏离是出于政治动机。