Knowing What We Don’t Know

Michael Giberson

In the WSJ, Numbers Guy columnist Carl Bialik explains, “What We Don’t Know About the Economy,” a column about the making of economics statistics and the limits of the process.

Of this column John Whitehead commented, “This is required reading for all those who think that economists should have a crystal ball that allows predictions of the macroeconomic future that are accurate enough to avoid ‘great’ (or even good) recessions. We aren’t even sure what has happened in the past until significant effort has been focused on the historical data.”