We’re Facing a Year of Unknowns After a Couple Years of Predictability

By Chris Kuehl, Ph.D.

Iimagine I have offered the same definition of an economist about a thousand times by now: “Somebody who explains tomorrow why the predictions they made yesterday didn’t come true today.” It is just that this is so very accurate.

The problem is that the data shifts nearly constantly. At its heart, economics is a social science (despite our attempts to use numbers as if it was a “real” science). We study human behavior, and there is no creature on earth less predictable and volatile than a human being. You remember your beloved Econ 101 class where the professor valiantly tried to assert that people “maximize expected

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