A government's ability to forecast key economic fundamentals accurately can affect business
confidence, consumer sentiment, and foreign direct investment, among others. A government
forecast based on an econometric model is replicable, whereas one that is not fully based on an
econometric model is non-replicable. Governments typically provide non-replicable forecasts (or,
expert forecasts) of economic fundamentals, such as the inflation rate and real GDP growth rate.
In this paper, we develop a methodology to evaluate non-replicable forecasts. We argue that
in order to do so, one needs to retrieve from the non-replicable forecast its replicable component,
and that it is the difference in accuracy between these two that matters. An empirical example to
forecast economic fundamentals for Taiwan shows the relevance of the proposed methodological
approach. Our main finding is that it is the undocumented knowledge of the Taiwanese government
that reduces forecast errors substantially.
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