Calculators and Quacks: Feeling the Economy’s Pulse in Times of Crisis

Harro Maas

A chapter in Including a Symposium on Mary Morgan: Curiosity, Imagination, and Surprise, 2018, vol. 36B, pp 23-39 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: In this chapter, I take a talk show in which Coen Teulings, then Director of the official Dutch Bureau for Economic Forecasting and Policy Analysis (CPB) was interviewed about its economic forecasts in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 as point of entry into an examination into how personal experience and judgment enter, and are essential for, the production and presentation of economic forecasts. During the interview it transpired that CPB did not rely on its macroeconomic models, but on personal experience encapsulated in “hand-made” monitors, to observe the unfolding crisis; monitors that were, in Teulings’ words, used to “feel the pulse” of the Dutch economy. I will take this metaphor as a cue to present several historical episodes in which models, numbers, and a certain feel for economic phenomena aimed to make CPB economists’ research more precise. These episodes are linked with a story about vain attempts by CPB director Teulings to drive out the personal from economic forecasting. The crisis forced him to recognize that personal experience was more important in increasing the precision of economic forecasts than theoretical deepening. The crisis thus both challenged the belief in the supremacy of theory driven, computer-based forecasting, and helped foster the view that precision is inevitably linked to judgment, experience and observation, and not seated in increased attention to high theory; scientifically sound knowledge proved less useful than the technically unqualified experiential knowledge of quacks.

Keywords: Macroeconomic forecasting; economic modeling; economic monitors; precision; judgment; personal knowledge; CPB (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 3-41542018000036B003
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542018000036B003/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0743-41542018000036B003 [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.emerald.com/books/book-chapter-media/27170073/epub/3101287)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542018000036b003

DOI: 10.1108/S0743-41542018000036B003

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().