@TechReport{dp-485,
  author        = {Breitung, Jörg and Schmeling, Maik},
  astring       = {Jörg Breitung and Maik Schmeling},
  title         = {Quantifying survey expectations: What's wrong with the
                  probability approach?},
  month         = {December},
  year          = {2011},
  pages         = {38},
  size          = {340},
  number        = {485},
  language      = {en},
  keywords      = {Quantification, Stock Market Expectations, Probability
                  Approach, Heterogeneity},
  jelclass      = {C53, D84, G17},
  abstract      = {We study a matched sample of individual stock market
                  forecasts consisting of both qualitative and quantitative
                  forecasts. This allows us to test for the quality of
                  forecast quantification methods by comparing quantified
                  qualitative forecasts with actual quantitative forecasts.
                  Focusing mainly on the widely used quantification framework
                  advocated by Carlson and Parkin (1975), the so-called
                  "probability approach", we find that quantified
                  expectations derived from the probability approach display
                  a surprisingly weak correlation with reported quantitative
                  stock return forecasts. We trace the reason for this low
                  correlation to the importance of asymmetric and
                  time-varying thresholds, whereas individual heterogeneity
                  across forecasters seems to play a minor role. Hence, our
                  results suggest that qualitative survey data may not be a
                  very useful device to obtain quantitative forecasts and we
                  suggest ways to remedy this problem when designing
                  qualitative surveys.}
}