Best Economic Forecasters Lay Out 2017 Calls
Can Stocks Keep Rallying Under a President Trump?
If excellence is not an act but a habit, the economists and analysts below fit the bill: they've clinched the No. 1 spot in Bloomberg's ranking for their indicator based on two years of consistently close forecasts.
We've asked our winning forecasters to preview what they expect 2017 to bring for the data points that they're best at predicting. Note that the rankings are as of the third quarter 2016, except for U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation, which is as of November and was calculated separately using the same methodology. Here's what the leaders expect.
"We see U.S. growth rising to a 2.5 percent to 3 percent range in 2017 following the slowdown experienced in 2016," Barraud said in an e-mail. "Households will remain the key driver of growth amid further drop in unemployment rate and rising wages," and President-elect Donald Trump's economic policies "could support growth through different aspects such as deregulation, tax reductions for companies and households" which would probably happen in the first half, with possible retroactive effects. Infrastructure spending could also provide a boost in the second half at earliest, he said, though the first half of 2018 seems more likely.