Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Annals of (apparently) bad predictions

Economists have been doing some soul-searching recently (see recent posts, for example, at Crooked Timber and Brad DeLong's blog for discussion and references), but economists aren't the only ones who have some less-than-great predictions to their (dis)credit.

I remember reading political scientist Steven Weber's article "The End of the Business Cycle" when it appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1997 (July/August issue). Here are the first two sentences of the summary: "The waves of the business cycle are becoming ripples. The recent American combination of minimal inflation and very low unemployment may not be an aberration, but the beginning of a new worldwide trend."

If you have a login and password, you can read the whole article at the Foreign Affairs site. Just search on the author's name.

1 comment:

hank_F_M said...

I think "the end of the bussiness cycle" is like "the end of the balance of power."

People have been saying that ever since I paid attention to such thins and long before. They are still with us.