Business Week‘s cover story slams macroeconomists.
Dilbert doesn’t think much of economists either:
Macroeconomists, Take Cover
TAGS: economists
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Haha. Brilliant.
I have a Dilbert daily calendar at work … and its always a struggle just to read one comic strip a day.
Oh the laughter.
http://www.theafternoonbreak.com
And Adams even has a degree in economics!
and microeconomists are forgotten,so macroeconomists get complaint,that’s better
The big thing that I noted in the Business Week article is the quote regarding the disunity of the field. That, I think, is the biggest knock against Macroeconomists – that there is a guise that it’s a unified science, when there are heavy political elements involved.
Useless sensationalist piece. Just because Economists don’t always agree in complex times of crisis and cannot predict the exact beginning and end of every business cycle does not mean that they have no value in securing solid growth over the long-term.
China and India saw their growth and living standards explode once they started listening to economists and opening their economies. Mugabe of Zimbabwe clearly does not listen to any economists in the world, leading to hyperinflation exceeding 10,000%. Care to fire all the economists anyone?
An economist’s prediction is only as good as the data they have. It is also important to understand what kind of prediction they are making and any qualifying statements that may go along with it.
A major problem for economists and the current crisis is that many probably didn’t know what was going on inside all those banks and couldn’t predict that the bursting of the housing bubble would have such a drastic impact.
Another area of weakness is the impact the post 9/11 monetary policy had on markets; with special attention to the housing market, gas prices, and trade/foreign capital markets.
There are also a lot of economists that are making predictions for a specific purpose. Depending on their purpose their predicted number is likely to be very different. Uncertainty has to be built in to any predicted number but that is not what most people see when they read a prediction. They see a number and they treat it like gospel.
With all that said I think that the Dilbert comic is spot on. No one really wants to listen to the guy that predicts doom and gloom even if doom and gloom is in our future. That may be the biggest hurdle to macroeconomics predicting the future.
Dear Caliphilosopher;
You have a point.
And Bill;
The doom and gloom has Protestant roots. The apparent optimism is Enlightenment in origin. We have had our full of both in sociology. The Problem of making correct predictions in micro and in macro economics— you need knowledge to do so – so how and where does one acquire such knowledge- tune in! Actually, I am trying an experiment of sorts- will let ya’all know if and when it works. And how.
Economists should spend some time with Industrial-Organizational Psychologists who study human performance. They can provide some insight in how to ‘measure’ human behavior and the impact it can have on the economic models. I also think it would be time well spent to study the behavioral strengths and weaknesses and other biodata of the workforce that is Wall Street and the major financial institutions. I think that we would find that there is a ‘profile’ for those involved that is very unique and different from the general public and the behaviors of this profile drive the market to a large extent that cannot be defined by a pure economic model.