What Economic Forecasts Say

Abstract

In previous chapters we have traced the links between economic theory and the policy pursued by post-war British governments. Here we are concerned with the contrasting views of forecasters working from broadly monetarist (new classical) and neo-Keynesian perspectives about where Britain is headed, and about job prospects. This provides a useful context from which to develop our own views and a helpful point of comparison.

‘For human beings, being children, have childish wilfulness and secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen as inevitable.’—G. K. Chesterton (1904)