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January 5, 2009

When Has Economics Been Correct on Anything Important?

The discussion over at Marginal Revolution of famous economists' errors is a reminder that economics is, in many ways, most famous for how badly it gets things wrong. After all, as I posted earlier, the current AEA meetings contained no papers referencing Keynes, and precious few about the current credit crisis. Economists' record for prescience and accuracy are … checkered at best.

Anyway, a MR reader gets the question about right:

Mistakes in economics is a dull subject.
The truly electrifying inquiry would be to name 10… well… 5… OK just 3 incidents when economics made indisputably correct (in a rigorous scientific sense – since economics dare to call itself a science) prediction/forecast on a more or less significant scale

After some thinking I have my own ideas, but rather than biasing things does anyone want to try the question on?

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