Inflation and interest rates

[southshore]

Yes. Of course, you meant interest rates.

Well spotted, glad you were paying attention.

 

[southshore]

I think we’re getting into Hari Seldon (see Issac Asimov and “ The Foundation”) territory

For the Mule read Putin?

 

[Mexboroseasider]

For the Mule read Putin?

Nah. Putin isn’t telepathic. And doesn’t control the minds of everyone in the Galaxy.

 

[southshore]

Nah. Putin isn’t telepathic. And doesn’t control the minds of everyone in the Galaxy.

but he thinks he does.

 

[18YearFreeTrial]

I was quite good at understanding classical economics but I wouldn't be good enough at statistics to take on econometrics. That said, I see that, at a business and Government level, it is normative economics and econometrics that are the Important tools.
Sadly, very clever people are employed to build very complicated models to inform decisions. I say sadly because at the end of the day there's a Secretary of State sitting in Whitehall thinking, how well will this go down in the Mail or the Sun.

Yep in reality, masters level economics or advanced econometrics is understandably the next level of economics in terms of education as it consequently equates to the development of economic theory and models, despite the fact it seems so distant from learning about the economy, trades, business practices and so forth... However, the beauty of econometrics is that you understand the economic principles and relationships using real world data and oneself can observe and make informed decisions using ones research, with an actual application as the the data has been taken from actual observations and recordings. Econometrics is fundamental in modern economics as it allows us to manipulate and observe data to test the theories we propose, henceforth we better understand the world we live in. It certainly is very math intensive and economists are the people who give politicians their fuel to burn in parliament, actual politicians just readout the data that economists have provided them, and they do so by twisting the narrative to suit their agenda. I would certainly be capable of creating and detailing a economic derivation that suits a labor politician and a conservative politician. It ultimately depends who uses my report and how they twist it for their own benefit.

 

[ElBurroSinNombre]

You're just a hop, skip and a jump from being a full on lockdown sceptic with sensible posts like this ESBN. Careful now

It's not quite the same thing as what the Economists did.
I went to a talk the other day from someone from one of the groups that advised the government during the pandemic. Every night they ran millions of models against the observed data looking for a good fit. So the model followed the data [and not vice versa]. It was a brilliant effort by the scientists and fed into government decision making. We have also seen many pandemics before so this information was used to inform the initial model selection. It's what any responsible government should do and here in the UK we have a strong science base. Of course no-one can predict the future but we should do as much as we can to prepare ourselves for likely outcomes. Which is what the government did.

 

[rockontommy]

It's not quite the same thing as what the Economists did.
I went to a talk the other day from someone from one of the groups that advised the government during the pandemic. Every night they ran millions of models against the observed data looking for a good fit. So the model followed the data [and not vice versa]. It was a brilliant effort by the scientists and fed into government decision making. We have also seen many pandemics before so this information was used to inform the initial model selection. It's what any responsible government should do and here in the UK we have a strong science base. Of course no-one can predict the future but we should do as much as we can to prepare ourselves for likely outcomes. Which is what we did.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one as we're treading old ground again. Neil Ferguson's models were 12yrs old and for a flu. Our pre-pandemic plans (where lockdowns expressly proscribed) were thrown out off the back of his fortune-telling. He was out by several orders of magnitude and the countries that didn't follow his lead prove this. Let's stick to what we agree on which is what you said initially - models rarely precisely fit real life scenarios and model makers will jump through various hoops to make their calculations be correct.