An analysis of the efficiency in the revision of forecasts by economic analysts in times of pandemic: The case of the international price of oil.

The research proposal aims to study whether leading economic analysts and professional forecasters around the world efficiently use all available information when producing and revising their international oil price forecasts in constantly changing economic and financial environments. This is of special interest during the year 2020 due to the pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus. The project will statistically verify whether the forecast review process for this variable is independent of past reviews, which corresponds to what is known in the literature as efficiency in the weak sense. In cases where the null hypothesis of efficiency in the weak sense is not rejected, we will proceed to statistically test whether the forecast review process is independent of a broad set of variables that are assumed to have been used by analysts, which corresponds to what is known in the literature as efficiency in the strong sense. This allows us to determine the variables that are most frequently used by professional forecasters and how they change over time.

Efficiency, forecasts, oil, expectations surveys, pandemic.