This issue: Bank of England forecasts, booster forecasts scored, recession risk roundup
- No new forecast today: This issue is all scores and comparisons
- First, a recap of what readers think the Bank of England will do
- Then, how your Covid booster forecasts turned out
- Finally, a roundup of recession forecasts from around the web
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How far will the Bank of England hike interest rates?
Last weekend, Nonrival covered the economic crisis in the UK and asked:
How likely is it that the Bank of England announces a rate increase of 1 percentage point or more in its Nov. 3 meeting?
Since then, the government has partly reversed its course. It's said it'll scrap one of the tax cuts, and will release a plan for addressing UK debt this month rather than next.
What readers said
So will the Bank of England raise rates by a full point or more? Readers see this one as a toss-up. The average of readers' forecasts was 52%, so about as likely as not.
The average reader forecast was 52%.
Reader perspectives on the Bank of England
Interestingly, no one who thought it was likely left a comment!
More reading:
- Adam Tooze, NYT: The first global deflation has begun
- John Van Reenen, HBR: The UK crisis might not be a one-off
- Peterson Institute: Uncoordinated monetary policies risk a historic global slowdown
- Bank of England deputy governor's speech this week on shocks & inflation
Booster forecasts, scored
How likely is it that the US administers more than 20 million doses of Covid vaccine in September?
It's time to see what happened and how your forecasts turned out.
Tens of thousands of American lives are at stake with the rollout of bivalent boosters, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund. But progress has been slow. The Biden administration has purchased 171 million doses, and some 200 million Americans are eligible.
So how many Covid vaccine doses were administered in September (bivalent plus original vaccine)? 8.8 million, per Our World In Data. At that pace, well under half of eligible Americans will get the bivalent booster by end of year.
And it looks like the daily number of doses may have already peaked:
Scoring your forecast
The average of reader forecasts for this question was 24%, or about a one-in-four chance of hitting 20 million doses. Since the US didn't hit 20 million doses, lower forecasts score better.
(You didn't make a prediction that week or else you'd see your personalized forecasting results here.)
- To revisit some of the reasoning readers gave at the time, click here.
- "It's a travesty." The Washington Post says just 4% of eligible Americans have gotten the bivalent booster as of Oct. 7
- Vaccine boosters delivered per 100 people, by country
Recession watch
Where are we on the chances of a US recession? Here are a few different forecasts:
- Karen Dynan, Peterson Institute: 2/3 chance US enters a recession in 2023
- Conference Board: 96% chance US experiences a recession by Oct. 2023
- Metaculus: 80% chance of a US recession by end of 2023
- Good Judgment Open: 37% chance that US GDP growth is negative in both Q3 and Q4 2022
Coming up
Next week, Nonrival will be back with a new forecast for readers to make. The plan for now is to alternate between new forecast weeks and comparison and scoring weeks.