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Few areas in economics are as controversial as economic forecasting. While the field has sparked great hopes for the prediction of economic trends and events throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, economic forecasts have often proved inaccurate or unreliable, thus provoking severe criticism in times of unpredicted crisis. Despite these failures, economic forecasting has not lost its importance. Futures Past considers the history and present state of economic forecasting, giving a fascinating account of the changing practices involved, their origins, records, and their implications. By bringing together economists, historians, and sociologists, this volume offers fresh perspectives on the place of forecasting in modern industrial societies, thereby making a broader claim for greater interdisciplinary cooperation in the history of economics.
List of contents
Table of Contents - Introduction: Laetitia Lenel, Roman Köster, and Ulrich Fritsche - Continuities and Discontinuities in Economic Forecasting: Tara M. Sinclair - Measuring and Managing Expectations: Consumer Confidence as an Economic Indicator, 1920s-1970s: Jan Logemann - The Economist as Futurologist: The Making and the Public - Reception of the Perspektivstudien in Switzerland, 1964-1975: Marion Ronca - The Janus Face of Inflation Targeting: How Governing Market Expectations of the Future Imprisons Monetary Policy in a Normalized Present: Timo Walter - Social Interaction, Emotion, and Economic Forecasting: Werner Reichmann - The Dynamics of Expectations: A Sequential Perspective on Macroeconomic Forecasting: Olivier Pilmis - Never Change a Losing Horse?: On Adaptations in German Forecasting after the Great Financial Crisis: Jörg Döpke, Ulrich Fritsche, and Gabi Waldhof
About the author
Ulrich Fritsche is an economist and full professor of economics, especially applied economics, at Universität Hamburg, Germany. His research interests include forecasting methods, macroeconomic expectation formation of households, and experts and time series econometrics.
Roman Köster is an economic historian and a currently visiting professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. His research interests include the history of economic crises and the history of economic thought.
Laetitia Lenel is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of history at Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. Her research project explores the history of business forecasting in Europe and the USA in the 20th century.
