'Ex-ante' Taylor rules - Newly discovered evidence from the G7 countries

This paper addresses the question of whether financial market participants apply the framework of Taylor-type rules in their forecasts for the G7 countries. To this end, we use the Consensus Economic Forecast poll providing us a unique data set of inflation rate, interest rate and growth rate forecasts for the time period 1989-2008. We provide empirical evidence that financial market participants incorporate Taylor-type rules in their forecasts. Thus, the paper uses ex-ante data for the estimation of Taylor rules. This is a new approach, because so far only ex-post (revised) or real-time data have been applied.