  The present study applies observations of individual predictions of the first
three releases of the US output growth rate to evaluate how the applied
judgment affects prediction efficiency and accuracy as well as if judgment is
persistent. While the first two issues have been assessed in other studies,
there is little evidence on the formation of judgment in macroeconomic
projections. Most of the forecasters produce unbiased predictions, but
employing the median Bloomberg projection as baseline, it turns out that
judgment generally does not improve accuracy. There seems to be persistence in
the judgment applied by forecasters in the sense that the sign of the
adjustment in the first release prediction carries over to the projections of
the two following revisions. One possible explanation is that forecasters use
some kind of anchor-and-adjustment heuristic.
