Paul Samuelson, one of the very first winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, had little faith in the predictive powers of the stock market. In the 1960s, the professor jokingly noted that “Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions”. Yet when it comes to forecasting a slump, the profession which Mr Samuelson helped to found has no better record than stockpickers. Not only did the majority of economists fail to foresee the 2008 financial crisis. Once the downturn hit, most forecasters predicted substantially higher growth rates than those which were actually realised.
諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎的早期得主之一保羅?塞繆爾森(Paul Samuelson)不怎么相信股票市場的預(yù)測能力。20世紀(jì)60年代，這位教授開玩笑地指出，“華爾街指數(shù)預(yù)測到了最近五次衰退中的九次”。不過，若論及預(yù)測衰退的成功率，塞繆爾森幫助建立的這個行當(dāng)?shù)某煽円矝]比選股師好到哪兒去。大多數(shù)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家不僅沒能預(yù)見到2008年的金融危機(jī)，而且在衰退來臨之時，大多數(shù)人預(yù)測的增長率還比實(shí)際結(jié)果高出不少。