Event: Women on Top

Growth is promoted by good micro-economic and stable macro-economic conditions. The idea that the economy is simply a set of accounting identities so that a bit more growth can be obtained by increasing government spending, is something that would even fail an AS level in economics. These things are well understood by IEA authors. As an institution, the IEA is often suspicious of forecasters (though we count many among our authors). However, the IEA has not been consistently wrong as Blanchflower suggested. Quite the reverse. Those who understand how an economy works will get the basic trends or ‘pattern predictions’ right. On the other hand, I am not sure that these economic basics are well understood by people who make wild predictions that are way off the mark.