---
title: "Consensus Economics forecast surveys (licensed)"
description: >-
  Consensus Economics surveys a panel of professional forecasters for
  cross-country macro and exchange-rate projections at several horizons. It is
  licensed: this page documents the access path and the gotchas, but the data
  was not exercised here.
sidebar:
  label: Consensus Economics
tags: [forecasts, exchange-rates, macro, survey-expectations, licensed, data:consensus-economics]
---

:::caution[Licensed: not exercised here]
**Consensus Economics surveys are a paid licensed product** (Consensus Economics
Inc.), so they carry **no provenance badge**: the
access path below was **not** run in this session (no subscription was
available). The page documents the access route and the gotchas; treat it as
unverified until someone exercises it through a licensed subscription. This is
the honest grade under the institute's Verified discipline.
:::

**Consensus Economics** runs monthly surveys of professional forecasters across
many countries, collecting projections for GDP growth, inflation, interest rates,
and **exchange rates** at fixed horizons (commonly 1, 3, 12, and 24 months, plus
fixed-year targets). It is the standard cross-country source for survey-based
expectations, widely used to test exchange-rate predictability and to measure
disagreement. A paper we distill uses it:
[Kremens, Martin & Varela](/wiki/papers/jf/2025/kremens-long-horizon-exchange-rate-2025/)
use Consensus Economics monthly consensus exchange-rate forecasts at the 1-, 3-,
12-, and 24-month horizons as the primary survey expectations series in their
long-horizon exchange-rate analysis.

- **Cost:** licensed, subscription. No free tier.
- **Publisher:** Consensus Economics Inc. (Consensus Forecasts; Foreign Exchange
  Consensus Forecasts).
- **Coverage:** professional-forecaster panels across major and many emerging
  economies, monthly, with consensus and individual responses at several horizons.

## Access (when licensed)

- **Through the Consensus Economics subscription.** The forecasts are distributed
  by subscription; historical individual-forecaster microdata is obtained through
  the publisher or a research arrangement.
- **Consensus is published; individual responses are the research asset.** The
  headline consensus is in the publications; forecaster-level responses (for
  dispersion) require the microdata.

## Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

- **Fixed-horizon versus fixed-event targets.** Some series are fixed horizons
  (for example 12 months ahead) and some are fixed calendar-year targets, which
  have a shrinking horizon through the year; mixing them misaligns the realized
  value. Confirm the target type per series.
- **Survey date and the information set.** Forecasts reflect the information at the
  survey collection date, not the publication date; predictability tests must use
  the collection-date information set. Align timing carefully.
- **Exchange-rate quote direction.** FX forecasts can be quoted as units of
  foreign per domestic or the reverse, and differ by country; a wrong convention
  flips the predicted change. Verify the quote direction per currency.
- **Panel composition changes.** Forecasters enter and leave; consensus and
  dispersion shift with the panel, not only with beliefs. Track membership.
- **Country and variable coverage is uneven.** Emerging-market and longer-horizon
  coverage is thinner and starts later; treat the panel as unbalanced. Pin the
  available window per country and horizon.

## Citation

Cite the publisher and product, e.g.: *Consensus Economics (Consensus Forecasts /
Foreign Exchange Consensus Forecasts), accessed YYYY-MM-DD.* State the country,
variable, horizon, target type (fixed-horizon vs fixed-year), and survey-date
alignment.