A vital challenge that students are faced with when working on economics paper is how to forecast since general livelihoods depend on this kind of forecasts. This article provides a general overview of what forecast is in light of an academic paper, as well as simple guidance on how to generate one.
In general, the term “forecast” is applied to any statement regarding the future. In academic projects such statements must be accurate, precise and provided with solid basis. Economic forecasting includes the detailed or approximate prediction of the possible elements in economic activity. Thus, economic forecasts can be done either very broadly or in many great details. One way or another, these items describe possible future behavior of certain parts of economy and help the experts to conduct thorough planning.
There are many different ways for the forecasts to be done. These include statistical analyses performed on the basis of parametric models, calculations, statistical analyses, simple extrapolations, etc. It’s hard to say how frequent the methods described above are applied, but in economics academic papers the following methods of forecasting are widely used:
Guessing
This technique is fully based on luck. In contrast to the other methods, guessing cannot be called a useful one. The thing is that “interesting” guesses are usually made known, while the “bad” ones are simply forgotten. Moreover, uncertainty that this method is attached with makes it impossible to do any forecasts in advance.
Expert Judgment
This is an integral part of the forecasting in economics papers. But truth is that expert judgment lacks validation in case it is the one and only component of the forecasting approach. Unfortunately, some of the professionals get lucky more often than not, so, it’s hard to predict who will turn to be successful next time.
Extrapolation
As long as the tendencies go on, the method can be used by the author. However, it’s rather unlikely, first of all, because of the fact that different extrapolations should be applied in different time points. Furthermore, economic forecasts in academic papers are most useful only when they predict possible changes in tendencies that the extrapolation does not include.
Surveys
If you conduct a survey of a particular business or consumer bases to get required information for your economic paper, you will most likely get the precise details that will help you to predict some future events. Since it’s not costly to conduct a survey, you will get an excellent opportunity to forecast possible changes in the business and probably work out radical solutions.
How confident can you be about the economic forecasts? It is obvious that our confidence will be based on how strong the supportive facts of the forecasts are. Using well-tested approaches, the author of the project will have an opportunity to view his predictions more effectively. But make sure to remember that the future will always remain uncertain, which means you will find out whether your forecasts are successful only when tomorrow comes.