Policy interest-rate expectations in Sweden: a forecast evaluation

In this article, we evaluate two types of Swedish policy interest-rate expectations: survey expectations and expectations inferred from market pricing. The data are drawn from the most prominent survey of financial-market economists and from Swedish financial markets, and they are carefully matched by date to ensure comparability. Results show that both kinds of expectations suffer from bias and inefficiency, and in terms of forecast precision there is no clear winner. We do find, though, evidence that the forecast accuracy of both kinds of policy-rate expectations has improved since the Riksbank started publishing its own policy-rate forecast, suggesting that this communication strategy has been beneficial from a policy perspective.