Yep-D 2016 Information Pack 2 – June 21, 2016

Dear Participant,

We can now assume (can we?) that you have some sense of the terms or phrases of “policy”, “policymaking”, “holistic”, “analysis”, “synthesis”, “GIGO”, “scientific knowledge”, “artistic dimension of policymaking”, “Ockham’s Razor”, “parsimony”, “KISS” and “Tinbergen Rule”. Remember that these will help you a lot while formulating and writing down your scenario solutions during Yep-D 2016.

In this information pack, we invite you to the fascinating world of economic data first. By the very nature of our workshop, we tend to underline macroeconomic data, indeed. Let’s turn to our key questions. What is data? What is the origin of this word? Is it singular or plural? What does distinguish macroeconomic and microeconomic data? Why do we talk about time series and cross section dimensions of data? By the way, what is panel data? Have you ever encountered these before, possibly in your statistics or econometrics courses? What do you understand when one talks about the dissemination of data? What is a dissemination calendar? Is it a real-time process?

Second, we turn our attention to forecasting of economic variables. Consider the most popular of such an exercise: How can we sense the upcoming pace of economic activity? If I say the growth rate of Turkish economy will be 8% in 2016, would you trust my forecast? Why? Why not? Should every forecast be based on econometric analyses? If not, what can you cite as alternative tools? You know about forecasting now. What about backcasting or nowcasting? Do you thing judgment is a crucial element of forecasting?

Third, we have a list of economic concepts for you to review. These are the fundamental economic relationships and laws: (1) Fundamental Identity of Macroeconomics, (2) Phillips Curve, (3) Expectations-augmented Phillips Curve, (4) Quantity Theory of Money, (5) Okun’s Law, (6) Taylor Rule, (7) Uncovered Interest Parity (8) Zarnowitz Rule. Without proper reference to those it would be almost impossible to generate reliable forecasts of an economy. By the way, are accuracy and precision the same things?

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Professional life is heavily based on communications. So is Yep-D. A significant portion of communications today takes place in electronic environments. E-mails are important. So is how fast one pays attention to professional e-mails. So is how properly one responds to business correspondences. Fortunately, smart phones, tablet computers and push e-mail notifications make our lives easier. One does not even have to check e-mails, they pop-up. More importantly, viewing e-mail attachments are now easier than it has ever been. There is a multiplicity of free mobile software regardless of the mobile operating system. Consequently, it is quite easy to measure one’s seriousness and devotion (to practically anything): those who respond to this e-mail within five days and include the phrase “Dismal Science” in their message body will automatically earn some bonus points in Yep-D 2016. Other than that everybody is still supposed to send a usual confirmation. Finally, please include your Facebook user name in your e-mails so as to be included in Yep-D page on Facebook.

Your turn now.