Consensus Economics forecast surveys (licensed)

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 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.