Inference on probabilistic surveys in macroeconomics with an application to the evolution of uncertainty in the survey of professional forecasters during the COVID pandemic

Probabilistic surveys on macroeconomic variables provide a wealth of information to the applied researcher. Extracting and using this information is not a trivial task, however. This chapter discusses the challenges involved in this task and the approaches used so far in the literature for conducting inference on probabilistic surveys. It also provides an application of some of these methods using the U.S. Survey of Professional Forecasters and investigates the evolution of uncertainty and tail risk for both output growth and inflation during the COVID pandemic.