Fifteen percent of economists in the survey said the Fed will start to taper in October and 28 percent said policy makers will wait until December. The remaining 13 percent said the Fed won’t begin reducing its pace of purchases until at least next year.

Policy makers are planning to taper as the economy strengthens. Fed officials forecast growth of as much as 2.6 percent this year and 3.5 percent in 2014.

The central bank’s forecasts for growth are more optimistic than Wall Street’s. The median estimate of private forecasters in a Bloomberg survey calls for an expansion of 1.9 percent this year and 2.7 percent next year.

The amount of initial tapering predicted by economists in the most recent survey was unchanged from the prior one. The central bank will halt bond buying entirely in June 2014, according to 44 percent of the economists in the latest survey.

Fed Forecasts

If economic data are consistent with the Fed’s forecasts, “the committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the pace of purchases later this year,” Bernanke said at the press conference. “We will continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around mid-year.”

The impact of tapering is largely reflected in prices of financial assets, said Jonathan Wright, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who worked at the Fed’s division of monetary affairs from 2004 until 2008.

“Saying that the Fed will taper later this year tightens financial conditions right now -- a risky strategy when the economy is only just gaining a bit of momentum,” he said.

The U.S. central bank began its third round of large-scale asset purchases in September by buying $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities. The Fed added $45 billion of Treasury purchases in December. The FOMC has said since September that it will buy bonds until seeing signs of substantial labor-market improvement.

Bernanke’s Successor