Starten på det nye år er prognosemagernes tid. Men Deutsche Bank ser med skepsis på de prognosemagere, der kommer med klare forudsigelser. Banken mener, at udviklingen er blevet så kompleks og uforudsigelig, at det er umuligt at komme med sikre prognoser. Banken bygger i høj grad sin opfattelse på pandemien og dens økonomiske virkning, men også den teknologiske udvikling med digitaliseringen. Ingen har kunnet forud de seneste to års udvikling, og nu kommer spørgsmålene: Vil en tvungen vaccination føre til oprør? Udvikles der en teknologi, der kan lagre den energi, der er behov for, når vi går ind i en grøn tidsalder? Banken taler om “system-kompleksitet”, og det indgår i al for ringe grad i prognosemagernes arbejde.
Systemic complexity and criticality in
economic forecasting
It is, once again, the season of the year when forecasters are offering their outlooks for the upcoming year.
There are still many hedgehog-type forecasters, who hold fast to their personal models of the
world and the economy, never look back, and hence are able to market their
forecasts with utter conviction. And of course, they do have their audience, which
laps up this kind of forecast, as it satisfies the demand for certainty that is so deeply
ingrained in our DNA.
However, the last two years should have convinced even the most stubborn
hedgehog that there is far less predictability, let alone certainty, around us than we
like to believe. This applies to events of both categories, the “known unknowns”
(such as hurricanes or other weather events) as well as the “unknown unknowns”,
which are not even mentioned as tail risks or black swans in those forecasts that
take the discussion of risks seriously and not just as a kind of a sophisticatedly wrapped disclaimer.
But lack of certainty affects our forecasts on a much deeper
level than the simple “we did not see this one coming”. It applies to the workings
of the system itself and the scope of the system relevant for economic forecasts,
which is no longer some type of macroeconomic model.
Given the pandemic,
climate change and digitalisation, it should be obvious that we need to look at the
socio-economic-technological system with all its complexity. Some of the relevant
interactions are already discussed: will mandatory vaccination cause further
tensions in societies, maybe even civil unrest? Will there be an energy storage
technology that will make the supply of renewable energies more independent of
the whims of nature?
The intertwined feedback loops create developments that one
can hardly approximate with some kind of linear equation; perhaps they cannot be
approximated at all! These issues of “system complexity” are, in our view, not
sufficiently appreciated by forecasters and the recipients of these forecasts, alike.
