Forecasts guide decisions in all areas of economics and finance. Economic policy makers base
their decisions on business cycle forecasts investment decisions of firms are based on demand
forecasts and portfolio managers try to outperform the market based on financial market
forecasts. Forecasts extract relevant information from the past and help to reduce the inherent
uncertainty of the future. The topic of this special issue of the Journal of Economics and
Statistics is the theory and practise of forecasting and forecast evaluation and an overview of
the state of the art of forecasting.
