The one-year forecasts for long-term interest rates issued by The Wall Street Journal's panel of economic forecasters are tested for directional accuracy. A binomial test reveals that few of the forecasters correctly predicted the direction of change in long-term interest rates so well that pure chance could be rejected, at a five percent significance level, as the source of their success. However, the pooled directional accuracy outcome for the panel as a whole was significant at five percent. The Henriksson–Merton and Pesaran–Timmermann tests for forecast value show that the pooled forecasts would be of value to a user. A chi-square goodness-of-fit test reveals no statistically significant difference between the abilities of business economists and academic economists to predict correctly the direction of change in long-term interest rates.
