Arun Raha of power-management company Eaton Corp. was the year’s top economic forecaster, according to the Wall Street Journal’s annual rankings.

The rankings are based on predictions made last January about how inflation, unemployment, interest rates and economic output would fare over the course of the year. Mr. Raha, who was at the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council when he made his predictions last year, had a near perfect score in the Journal’s methodology developed by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. (Download the full rankings here.)

The economists in general did much better in 2012 than they did in 2011, even though they were too optimistic on growth and too pessimistic on unemployment. Last year’s top score would have barely cracked the top 20 this year. (Read related article.)