Tim Harford Quotes

Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right.

It's important for market participants to have a sense of how we think about the economy and the appropriate path of policy, to look at incoming data, and to form their own judgments as to whether or not changes in policy would be appropriate.

To be sure, if you watch CNBC all day long you'll pick up some interesting news about particular companies and the economy as a whole. Unfortunately, to get to the useful information, you have to wade through reams of useless stuff, with little guidance on how to distinguish between the two.

The current fad in economic forecasting is to project so far into the future that no one will be around to hold you accountable.

We all know that Americans love their statistics - in sport, obviously. And in finance too.

Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.

It is a truth universally acknowledged on Wall Street that original research is on life support. Serious research can be bad for business, as well as expensive.

I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank's name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate.

In the 1970s, as historians became enchanted with microhistories, economists were expanding the reach of their discipline. Nations, states and cities began to plan for the future by consulting with economists whose prognostications were shaped by investment cycles rather than historical ones.

Predicting the market is always tough.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

I am an economist, not an astrologer.

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

In my long life, I have known some great economists, but I have never counted myself among their number nor walked in their company.

We have the best mathematical economic models in the world, and just because our models have been wrong for 14 straight quarters does not mean that they will be wrong in the 15th quarter.

We have professional economists who can defend any viewpoint with statistics and they do that everywhere in the world.

It's because finance is so baffling that makes being an economist such a safe option. It nestles down comfortably with psychiatry and astrology as a profession where getting it patently wrong is just not a problem - and also, rather wonderfully, seems to have no adverse affect on their professional standing whatsoever.

Sometimes economists are right, and sometimes economists are wrong.

I'm an economist, I do a lot of forecasting, and I'm probably one of the most successful forecasters in terms of very specific kinds of forecasts.

Capital markets reward you for what you learn that other people have yet to ascertain.

An economist is someone who knows all the answers to last years' questions.

As an investor my job is to figure out what will happen rather than what should happen.

Wall Street is where prophets tell us what will happen and profits tell us what did happen.