Stephen King (global economist at HSBC) made some profound comments about forecasting in The Times (London) (paywall) yesterday.
He points out that it is only a year since the International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticised UK economic strategy and forecast 0.7% GDP growth in 2013 and 1.5% in 2014. The latest estimate for 2013 is growth is 1.9%. The IMF now forecasts growth for 2014 at 2.4% and notes the strength of the UK economy. I should note that the UK Treasury’s forecasts were little different from the IMF’s.
Why, asks King, should we take any notice of the IMF forecast, or their opinions, now when they are so unapologetic about last year’s under estimate and their supporting comments?
The fact is that any forecast should come attached to an historic record of previous forecasts and actual outcomes, preferably on a deviation from aim chart. In fact, wherever somebody offers a forecast and there is no accompanying historic deviation from aim chart, I think it a reasonable inference that they have something to hide. The critical matter is that the chart must show a stable and predictable process of forecasting. If it does then we can start to make tentative efforts at estimating accuracy and precision. If not then there is simply no rational forecast. It would be generous to characterise such attempts at foresight as guesses.
Despite the experience base, forecasting is all about understanding fundamentals. King goes on to have doubts about the depth of the UK’s recovery and, in particular, concerns about productivity. The ONS data is here. He observes that businesses are choosing to expand by hiring cheap labour and suggests macroeconomic remedies to foster productivity growth such as encouraging small and medium sized enterprises, and enhancing educational effectiveness.
It comes back to a paradox that I have discussed before. There is a well signposted path to improved productivity that seems to remain The Road Not Taken. Everyone says they do it but it is clear from King’s observations on productivity that, in the UK at least, they do not. That would be consistent with the chronically poor service endemic in several industries. Productivity and quality go hand in hand.
I wonder if there is a preference in the UK for hiring state subsidised cheap labour over the rigorous and sustained thinking required to make real productivity improvements. I have speculated elsewhere that producers may feel themselves trading in a market for lemons. The macroeconomic causes of low productivity growth are difficult for non-economists such as myself to divine.
However, every individual company has the opportunity to take its own path and “Put its sticker on a lemon”. Governments may look to societal remedies but as an indefatigable female politician once trenchantly put it:
The individual is the true reality in life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called “society,” or the “nation,” which is only a collection of individuals. Man, the individual, has always been and, necessarily is the sole source and motive power of evolution and progress.
Unanticipated Knowledge 