…alternative — giving up. That is, we might conclude that we don’t understand expectations formation and that we won’t for a long while, so we should just decide that economic…

…economists would use one set of (primitive) models for short term forecasting, but not at all assume that the factors they left out (left as disturbance terms) weren’t important. This…

…retail sales and adds practically no predictive value for aggregate consumption or GDP forecasting. French consumers could be just miserable and still post relatively healthy retail sales and aggregate consumption…

…— PS – Need a consultant with expertise in analytics and forecasting, and who can explain what it means to your business in simple (and actionable) English (or Portuguese or…

…output was unchanged. The chart shows industrial production this cycle compared to other cycles. The old forecasting rule of thumb was that it took about a year from the bottom…

…will need to add 200 thousand jobs per month to hold the unemployment rate steady. That is why forecasting the participation rate is important – and why reports of the…

…The Slow Recovery of Unemployment: I don’t like to make economic forecasts. Though I do it on occasion, I generally leave that to Tim Duy — he’s much more of…

…look at nominal income growth is that it is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition for economic growth to become self-sustaining. Moreover, this cycle, for the first time…

…and does not imply anything for future growth. While those forecasting a double dip will see this report to be supporting their forecast, it looks to me like an argument…

…the caveat that forecasting economics is “subject to considerable uncertainty.” It projects a relatively slow recovery from the recession, as is typical with financial crises, with unemployment staying relatively high…