Would Policymaker Use of Complexity Analysis Make Economics More Relevant to the Real World?

Debate at the 2017 Festival of Economics, Bristol, chaired by Romesh Vaitilingam

  1. Catherine Mann, Chief Economist, OECD - complexity analysis in real world economics #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas https://t.co/avI3Qi7tNV
    Catherine Mann, Chief Economist, OECD - complexity analysis in real world economics #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas pic.twitter.com/avI3Qi7tNV
  2. "Why has monetary policy not had quite the effect that we thought?" @CLMannEcon on transmission channels #economicsfest
  3. Channels of transmission (risk, uncertainty) affect effectiveness of monetary policies #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  4. Forecasting macro-economic behaviour (growth, inflation) short term to 20yr projections #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  5. Doyne Farmer, Physicist, Oxford Martin School, “economics is hard - atoms don’t think!” #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas https://t.co/mKQZM2iQhb
    Doyne Farmer, Physicist, Oxford Martin School, “economics is hard - atoms don’t think!” #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas pic.twitter.com/mKQZM2iQhb
  6. If we treat all economic shocks as exogenous, we're saying that it's someone else's problem to understand why they happened - Doyne Farmer at #economicsfest
  7. Market reactions to shocks & behaviours as a whole can lead to unexpected collective emergent properties #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  8. What, how & who are affected by specific policies? Increasing granularity is increasingly challenging to forecast - need machine learning & simulation models #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  9. "Economics has a long tradition of incremental progress in research - physics uses more radical shifts" - Doyne Farmer at #economicsfest
  10. Taking Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model to individual level for deeper understanding of models of change - endogenous dynamics #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  11. Catherine Mann and Doyne Farmer debate using complexity analysis to inform policy. #economicsfest https://t.co/8yp73SnVOA
    Catherine Mann and Doyne Farmer debate using complexity analysis to inform policy. #economicsfest pic.twitter.com/8yp73SnVOA
  12. Importance of web-scraping and judicious assumptions for better modelling #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  13. "I'm an engineer, not a physicist" - @CLMannEcon's response on the need to solve the policy problem at hand #economicsfest
  14. Need to build behavioural assumptions into models at people level #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas @Doynefar
  15. Is the world becoming more rational? Increase in potential collective rationality but individual behaviour unpredictable #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  16. Strong, balanced, sustainable inclusive growth is the aim of the G20 #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas
  17. Better job of predicting financial crisis? Early warning indicators were all there but not picked up #economicsfest @UoBris_IAS @FestivalofIdeas