Federal Reserve policymakers began reporting their economic forecasts to Congress in 1979. These forecasts are important because they indicate what the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members think will be the likely consequence of their policies. The Fed reports both the range (high and low) of the individual policymaker's forecasts and a truncated central tendency. The central tendency range omits outliers from both the top and the bottom of the full range. Generally, I find that the

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... casts derived from the full range are at least as good as those derived from the central tendency and in a few cases, significantly better. Thanks to Mike Dueker, Kevin Kliesen, Chris Neely, and Bob Rasche for helpful comments. Athena Theodorou provided research assistance. 2 (referred to below as the 12-month-ahead forecasts). In July, forecasts are updated for the current calendar year (6-month-ahead forecasts) and preliminary projections are made for the next calendar year (18-month-ahead forecasts). Separate forecasts are made by each of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members (and nonvoting Federal Reserve Bank presidents), but the individual forecasts are not published. 3 Rather, the Fed reports two summary statistics: first, the low and the high forecast among all the policymakers, and second, the central tendency, which has been reported since February 1983, is a smaller range that omits extreme forecasts. This paper evaluates the information content of the two summary statistics, the full range and central tendency. I define two FOMC forecasts: One is the midpoint of the full range (FR) and the other is the midpoint of the central tendency range (CT). The paper includes a comparison of forecast accuracy, tests for bias and efficiency, and encompassing tests to see if one or the other of these summary statistics encompassed the other. Admittedly, the two forecasts calculated from the range and central tendency are quite close. In many of the tests, we cannot distinguish between the two. However, where statistically significant differences exist, they generally favor the use of the full range. 3 The FOMC is the policymaking committee of the Federal Reserve System. When the Board is full, the Committee consists of the 7 governors of the Board, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and 4 of the remaining 11 Federal Reserve Bank presidents who serve on a rotating basis. All 12 presidents attend every meeting, contribute to the discussion, and provide forecasts that are summarized in testimony to the Congress. In this article, when we refer to the FOMC forecasts we mean the summary of forecasts that are collected from FOMC members and non-voting Federal Reserve Bank presidents.