TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fair,Ray C.
AU  - Shapiro,Matthew D.
AU  - Dominguez,Kathryn M.
TI  - Forecasting the Depression:  Harvard Versus Yale
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2095
PY  - 1989
Y2  - February 1989
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2095
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2095.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ray C. Fair
Cowles Foundation
P.O. Box 208281
Yale University
New Haven, CT  06520-8281
E-Mail: ray.fair@yale.edu

Matthew D. Shapiro
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
611 Tappan St
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220
Tel: 734/764-5419
Fax: 734 764-2769
E-Mail: shapiro@umich.edu

Kathryn M.E. Dominguez
University of Michigan
Department of Economics and Ford School
Weill Hall
735 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Tel: 734-764-9498
Fax: 734-763-9181
E-Mail: kathrynd@umich.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1987-03-01
AB  - Was the Depression forecastable? After the Crash, how long did it take contemporary economic forecasters to realize how severe the downturn was going to be? How long should it Have taken them to come to this realization? These questions are addressed by studying the predictions of the Harvard Economic Service and Yale's Irving Fisher during 1929 and the early 1930's. The data assembled by the Harvard and Yale forecasters are subjected to modern statistical analysis to learn whether their verbal pronouncements were consistent with the data. We find that both the Harvard and Yale forecasters were systematically too optimistic, yet nothing in the data suggests that the optimism was unwarranted.
ER  -