The accuracy of the conference board’s buying plans index: A comparison of judgmental vs. extrapolation forecasting methods

This paper compares the Conference Board’s buying intentions for consumer durable goods with forecasts constructed using simple time-series extrapolation over 177 months. The results show that simple time-series extrapolations provide more accurate forecasts than the judgmental approach. Very little support is found for using buying intentions as a forecasting tool for predicting the sales of durable goods.