Does reliable information improve the accuracy of judgmental forecasts?

This study investigates people’s ability to use information when forecasting time series. Previous studies of time series forecasting have emphasized the importance of additional information in improving the accuracy of the final forecasts. In this study, the subjects were presented with perfect and imperfect information about the future direction of the time series; also there was a control condition with no additional information provided. Results indicate that the more accurate the information provided, the more improved the quality of the forecasts. The subjects, however, were not able to fully use the information and thus underperformed simple statistical forecasting models.