Prediction: The long and short of it

Antony Millner (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Daniel Heyen (ETH Zurich)

GPI Working Paper No. 7-2020, published in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

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Commentators often lament forecasters’ inability to provide precise predictions of the long-run behaviour of complex economic and physical systems. Yet their concerns often conflate the presence of substantial long-run uncertainty with the need for long-run predictability; short-run predictions can partially substitute for long-run predictions if decision-makers can adjust their activities over time. So what is the relative importance of short- and long-run predictability? We study this question in a model of rational dynamic adjustment to a changing environment. Even if adjustment costs, discount factors, and long-run uncertainty are large, short-run predictability can be much more important than long-run predictability.

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