The full post of the discussion about economic forecasting that I had with Professor Kashif Mansori of Colby College and Angry Bear is now up at the Wall Street Journal’s Econoblog. Here’s my bottom line:
Don’t ask for too much of your forecast or your policy, and it won’t disappoint you.
Or maybe you should read the whole thing.
I’ve been engaged in a very interesting discussion with Kash at Angry Bear on economic forecasting which will appear in the Wall St. Journal’s Econoblog later this week. Kash has a couple of posts [1], [2] based on his contributions over at Angry Bear. Here are the remarks that I used to open the discussion:
As a service to California readers, I call attention to new state regulations on disposal of household waste.
Even if the new Medicare prescription drug plan’s implementation improves, that’s just the beginning of our problems.
The internet can be a good source of information about issues that aren’t adequately covered by the mainstream media. It can also be a font of considerable kookiness.
The February oil futures price on NYMEX has jumped $8 a barrel in the last three weeks. It’s useful to try to put this into a broader view of what’s going on in the world oil market.
Do economists have a sensible way of thinking about the world?
Does the cross-border fragmentation of production mean that measured trade flows are irrelevant?
How good is the news, really?
I’ve just written up the Idiot’s Guide to Using Tex with Powerpoint. Here it is (it’s only one sentence long):
Download this, find the symbol you want, and copy and paste it into your presentation.