<p>The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts the Farm Balance Sheet each year. The Farm Balance Sheet provides an estimate of the value of physical and financial assets in the United States agriculture sector over time (USDA, 2023). The forecasts evaluated in this paper are related to assets and debt in the farm sector, including total farm assets, farm assets real estate, total farm debt, farm debt real estate, and farm debt non-real estate. These forecasts predict the growth in the agricultural sector and help various stakeholders, such as policy makers, USDA program administrators, and agricultural lenders make important decisions. Given the importance of these forecasts in the agricultural sector, it is the main objective of this research to examine the degree to which the Farm Balance Sheet forecasts are optimal (unbiased and efficient). During this study, forecasts from the Farm Balance Sheet in the 1986-2021 period are found to be unbiased using Holden and Peel test (1990). Also, using efficiency tests by Nordhaus (1987), it was found that forecasts from the Farm Balance Sheet are inefficient. This, suggests all the information is not efficiently incorporated when the forecast is produced .</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/23748945 |
| Date | 26 July 2023 |
| Creators | Pedro Antonio Diaz Cachay (16631448) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Evaluating_the_USDA_s_Farm_Balance_Sheet_Forecasts/23748945 |
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