by Mike Kimel Why Much of the Population Thinks Economists are Charlatans Noah Smith asks why people think economists are charlatans. He concludes it has something to do with trade. I submit the answer is much, much simpler, and I think it deals with the part of economics which has most visibility with the public: macroeconomics. Read this post from […]

by Mike Kimel Why Economists (On Average) are Terrible Forecasters My colleague, Rebecca Wilder, had a post at her site entitled Economists are terrible forecasters – why trust them anyway?. The reason why economists as a general rule are lousy forecasters is obvious: there are no penalties to being wildly wrong. Prominent examples abound. Dow […]

by Mike Kimel Deficit numbers for CEA chair signatories on the deficit letter Cross-posted at Presimetrics Title updated I’m kind of late to this, but apparently ten ex-chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors decided to share their opinion about the national debt with the rest of us. There’s been commentary here and there […]

As I should have noted yesterday, and as Arnold Kling discusses today, sometimes the questions are as revealing as the responses. And sometimes, the answers are suspiciously inconsistent. Below is the graphic from my question for the Q2 Kauffman Economic Outlook: A Quarterly Survey of Leading Economics Bloggers. Link to the survey press release here, […]

Simon Johnson on the possible consequences of Goldman Going Greek. Economics of Contempt explains why economist John Cochrane should not be allowed to talk about finance. (Bonus coverage: EofC’s previous piece on John Taylor) Alea’s jck on how all the talk about risk management became mainstreamed.