The Livingston Survey is a biannual survey (conducted in June and December of every year) about the economy of the United States conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
Contents
History
The Livingston Survey was created and originally administered by columnist Joseph Livingston in 1946. He administered it biannually until his death in 1990. In 1990, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia took over responsibility for administering the survey.
A 1997 paper by Dean Croushure of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia described the history of the survey, argued for its usefulness in testing rational expectations hypotheses through the comparison of forecasts with reality, and explained how the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia was taking over the survey.
Academic research
There is extensive academic research citing the Livingston Survey, including some devoted to evaluating the accuracy and bias in the forecasts. For instance, a 1983 paper by Dietrich and Joines began with the observation: "For more than a decade, researchers have been using the Livingston survey data on inflationary expectations in empirical work."
The heyday of use for the Livingston Survey was the late 1970s and early 1980s, because it was the main survey of forecasts that had been around for a sufficiently long time at the time. Around 1990, research on forecast accuracy switched to using the Survey of Professional Forecasters and Blue Chip Economic Indicators, and more recent research has focused on the Consensus Forecasts.
Reception in the press and blogs
Livingston Survey forecasts have been cited by the financial press and blogs many times.