Forecasting tournaments – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

Why Economists Should Embrace Forecasting Tournaments

By the mid 19th century, it was proven that hand-washing could slash hospital death rates. But it was water off a duck’s back to mid-19th-century surgeons. This was partly because it remained unexplained — indeed unexplainable — within the prevailing paradigm in which disease reflected an imbalance in the body’s four humours. I thought of this reflecting on Ben Bernanke’s recent review of the Bank of England’s economic forecasting. As I argued last August, the Bank could dramatically improve the governance of forecasting by using open forecasting tournaments. Yet, the idea wasn’t even considered. ….[READ]