CERF economists join WSJ survey group

(WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. – Jan. 22, 2019) California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) has joined the select group of contributors to The Wall Street Journal’s Economic Forecasting Survey. 

CERF is one of only six university-based forecast centers in the country, including UCLA Anderson Forecast, that are included in The Wall Street Journal survey. The newspaper checks in monthly with about 60 economists from major forecast centers and finance, business and nonprofit institutions including Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Goldman Sachs. 

“The CERF team feels privileged to be included in the survey alongside some of the largest and most respected forecast teams in the nation,” said CERF Executive Director Matthew Fienup. “Our inclusion is validation of CERF’s outstanding track record of accurate forecasts and timely, clear-eyed analysis.” 

In each of the Journal’s monthly surveys, economists weigh in with predictions for gross domestic product, unemployment, home prices and other economic indicatorsin the short term and over the next few years. The results are widely referenced both in the Journal’s own analysis and by private industry and government policymakers. 

The National Association for Business Economics (NABE), Reuters and Pulsenomics-Zillow also include CERF in their surveys on economic policies and outlook and the housing market. In 2016, NABE awarded second place in its annual most-accurate-forecast competition to Cal Lutheran’s economists.

CERF, which launched nearly 10 years ago, provides county, state and national forecasts and custom economic analysis for government, business and nonprofit organizations. Media throughout the country including the Washington Post, Forbes, Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Fox Business and CNBC have quoted its economists. 

Fienup joined CERF in 2014 and became executive director in 2016. An expert on the economics of land use, urban growth restriction and environmental markets, he helped develop California’s first formal centralized market for individual landowners to buy and sell groundwater in 2017.

Director of Economics Dan Hamilton came to Cal Lutheran from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Economic Forecast Project to help launch CERF and the university’s graduate program in economics. He has worked with economic forecasting models for more than two decades. 

For more information, go to clucerf.org.