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Revista Colombiana de Estadística

Print version ISSN 0120-1751

Rev.Colomb.Estad. vol.35 no.1 Bogotá Jan./June 2012

 

Quantification of Ordinal Surveys and Rational Testing: An Application to the Colombian Monthly Survey of Economic Expectations

Cuantificación de encuestas ordinales y pruebas de racionalidad: una aplicación con la encuesta mensual de expectativas económicas

HÉCTOR MANUEL ZÁRATE1, KATHERINE SÁNCHEZ2, MARGARITA MARÍN3

1Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Estadística, Bogotá, Colombia. Lecturer. Email: hmzarates@unal.edu.co
2Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Estadística, Bogotá, Colombia. MSc student. Email: ksanchezc@unal.edu.co
3Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Estadística, Bogotá, Colombia. MSc student. Email: mmarinj@unal.edu.co


Abstract

Expectations and perceptions obtained in surveys play an important role in designing the monetary policy. In this paper we construct continuous variables from the qualitative responses of the Colombian Economic Expectation Survey (EES). This survey examines the perceptions and expectations on different economic variables. We use the methods of quantification known as balance statistics, the Carlson-Parkin method, and a proposal developed by the Analysis Quantitative Regional (AQR) group of the University of Barcelona. Then, we later prove the predictive ability of these methods and reveal that the best method to use is the AQR. Once the quantification is made, we confirm the rationality of the expectations by testing four key hypotheses: unbiasedness, no autocorrelation, efficiency and orthogonality.

Key words: Rational Expectations, Survey, Quantification.


Resumen

En este artículo se cuantifican las respuestas cualitativas de la Encuesta Mensual de Expectativas Económicas (EMEE) a través de métodos de conversión tradicionales como la estadística del balance de Batchelor, el método probabilístico propuesto por Carlson-Parkin (CP) y la propuesta del grupo de Análisis Cuantitativo Regional (ACR) de la Universidad de Barcelona. Para las respuestas analizadas de esta encuesta se encontró que el método ACR registra el mejor desempeño teniendo en cuenta su mejor capacidad predictiva. Estas cuantificaciones son posteriormente utilizadas en pruebas de racionalidad de expectativas que requieren la verificación de cuatro hipótesis fundamentales: insesgamiento, correlación serial, eficiencia y ortogonalidad.

Palabras clave: cuantificación, encuestas, expectativas racionales.


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[Recibido en abril de 2011. Aceptado en marzo de 2012]

Este artículo se puede citar en LaTeX utilizando la siguiente referencia bibliográfica de BibTeX:

@ARTICLE{RCEv35n1a06,
AUTHOR = {Zárate, Héctor Manuel and Sánchez, Katherine and Marín, Margarita},
TITLE = {{Quantification of Ordinal Surveys and Rational Testing: An Application to the Colombian Monthly Survey of Economic Expectations}},
JOURNAL = {Revista Colombiana de Estadística},
YEAR = {2012},
volume = {35},
number = {1},
pages = {77-108}
}

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