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Friday, October 19, 2012
Paul Solmon — Obama or Romney? How Accurate Are Economic Models?
Ray Fair, a professor of economics at Yale University, who has come up with his own model to predict elections.
"RAY FAIR: Right at this moment, it's 49.5 percent of the two-party vote for Obama. Could be 50.1 percent, if the economy really does quite a bit better in the third quarter than I'm predicting it will, but somewhere around 50 percent. And so that's not going to change.
PAUL SOLMAN: And 2.5 to 3 percentage points of error - something like that?"
I think his model is probably worth much less than its scope.
Couldn't a school age kid, off the top of his head, make a similar "estimate" - therefore what is the worth of his model and all the variables he is likely using?
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ReplyDelete"RAY FAIR: Right at this moment, it's 49.5 percent of the two-party vote for Obama. Could be 50.1 percent, if the economy really does quite a bit better in the third quarter than I'm predicting it will, but somewhere around 50 percent. And so that's not going to change.
PAUL SOLMAN: And 2.5 to 3 percentage points of error - something like that?"
I think his model is probably worth much less than its scope.
Couldn't a school age kid, off the top of his head, make a similar "estimate" - therefore what is the worth of his model and all the variables he is likely using?