Link to Interview Professor Laibson commented on the fact that he did not expect economics to be able to forecast what will happen in the macroeconomy over very long time horizons for years, if ever. This was very surprising to me. In my previous economics coursework, we've explored the tremendous strides the field has made, including concepts that were once thought to be impossible to explain. New economic models are still developed to explain economic phenomena. Even entire fields are developed, like the topic of this interview behaviorial economics. It's surprising that there seems to be a finite limit on where our ability to forecast economic activity will be able to go, as I expect massive progress to still be made in the field. I suppose a lot of this restriction is due to the result that there are unpredictable shocks that affect the economy and render some projections useless, but it's still surprising that we won't be able to develop a model that is somewhat robust to these shocks.
top of page
bottom of page