Do economic forecasts depend on the nature of the economist?

The forecaster's personality seems to influence the forecast. While some are congenital optimists, others are pessimists. They are like the bulls and bears of economics-econometrics confluence

Topics
Indian Economy | Economic slowdown | Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan 

T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan

Recently, a very good economist friend of mine argued that we needed to move to quarter-on-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) forecasts. Currently, these forecasts are on a year-on-year basis. The latter, he said, missed the momentum part of GDP growth.

Upon this, I thought to myself, “why not weekly then”? Jokes aside, people always have, and always will, want to know what will happen in the future. Whether it is parrots picking out a card or an economist selecting the data, there’s not much difference really in the method. It all depends on what you trust. So ...

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First Published: Tue, March 02 2021. 12:42 IST
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