CBO's Revenue Forecasting Record

Abstract

To prepare the baseline budget projections on which much of its analysis is based, the Congressional Budget Office must regularly produce revenue forecasts. As a part of that process, the agency assesses the accuracy of its past projections and continually refines its methods for projecting revenues to attempt to make them more accurate. This report examines the accuracy of CBO s revenue projections since 1982, the earliest year for which the information necessary to assess the forecasts is available. On average, the agency s projections have been a bit too high more so for projections spanning six years than for those spanning two owing mostly to the difficulty of predicting when economic downturns will occur. The overall accuracy of CBO s revenue projections has been similar to that of the projections of other government agencies.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2015
Accession Number
ADA624089

Entities

People

  • David Weiner
  • Logan Timmerhoff
  • Mark Booth

Organizations

  • Congressional Budget Office

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Budgets
  • Business Administration
  • Commerce
  • Delphi Method
  • Economic Analysis
  • Economic Forecasting
  • Errors
  • Governments
  • Law
  • Money
  • Square Roots
  • Standards
  • State Governments
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Taxes
  • United States

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Economics
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting