Almost 40 years ago, Robert Lucas made a huge, but not quite original, contribution, when he provided a very compelling example of how the predictions of the then standard macroeconometric models used for policy analysis were inherently vulnerable to shifts in the empirically estimated parameters contained in the models, shifts induced by the very policy change under consideration. Insofar as those models could provide reliable forecasts of the future course of the economy, it was because the policy environment under which the parameters of the model had been estimated was not changing during the time period for which the forecasts were made. But any forecast deduced from the model conditioned on a policy change would necessarily be inaccurate, because the policy change itself would cause the agents in the model to alter their expectations in light of the policy change, causing the parameters of the model to diverge from their…
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