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Futures Past. Economic Forecasting in the 20th and 21st Century

by Ulrich Fritsche (Volume editor) Roman Köster (Volume editor) Laetitia Lenel (Volume editor)
©2020 Conference proceedings 220 Pages
Open Access

Summary

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.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • List of Authors
  • 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
  • Series Page

cover

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the
Library of Congress.

About the author

The Editors
Ulrich Fritsche is an economist and full professor of economics, especially applied economics, at Universität Hamburg. His research interests include forecasting methods, macroeconomic expectation formation of households and experts, and time series econometrics.

Roman Köster is an economic historian and 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 U.S. in the 20th century.

About the book

Ulrich Fritsche/Roman Köster/
Laetitia Lenel (eds.)

Futures Past.
Economic Forecasting
in the 20th and 21st Century

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 century, 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.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

List of Authors

Jörg Döpke teaches economics and empirical research methods at the University of Applied Sciences, Merseburg. Before joining this institution, he has been affiliated with the Kiel Institute of World Economics and the German central bank. Research interests include empirical macroeconomics and business cycle forecasting.
Contact: joerg.doepke@hs-merseburg.de.

Ulrich Fritsche is an economist and Full Professor of Economics, esp. Applied Economics at Universität Hamburg. His research interests include forecasting methods, macroeconomic expectation formation of households and experts, and time series econometrics.
Contact: ulrich.fritsche@uni-hamburg.de.

Roman Köster is currently Visiting Professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. His research interests include economic and environmental history with focus on the 20th century. Among other topics he has written about the “Crisis” of German economics during the 1920s (“Die Wissenschaft der Außenseiter,” 2011) and the history of waste management after 1945 in West Germany (“Hausmüll. Abfall und Gesellschaft in Westdeutschland 1945–1990,” 2017).
Contact: roman.koester@unibw.de.

Details

Pages
220
Publication Year
2020
ISBN (PDF)
9783631818695
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631818701
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631818718
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631793169
DOI
10.3726/b16817
Open Access
CC-BY
Language
English
Publication date
2020 (March)
Keywords
Fiktionale Erwartungen Prognosefehler Geschichte der Wirtschaftsprognose Gesellschaftliche Relevanz der Wirtschaftswissenschaften Ökonomisches Denken im 20. Jahrhundert
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2020. 220 pp., 2 fig. col., 12 fig. b/w, 10 tables.

Biographical notes

Ulrich Fritsche (Volume editor) Roman Köster (Volume editor) Laetitia Lenel (Volume editor)

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.

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Title: Futures Past. Economic Forecasting in the 20th and 21st Century