Long-term Forecasts in International Economics
回顾了过去几十年国际经济学领域的长期预测，分析其成功或失败的模式，包括对奥威尔、约瑟夫和马尔萨斯预测的讨论。
Eric Blair's forecast from the 1940's called for a 1984 international political economy with constant war between three global powers, designed to use up resources otherwise so abundant that the masses would be free to reflect on, and consequently depose, the bureaucratic elite (George Orwell, 1949). Orwell's forecast was wrong, although perhaps in part only because it was a self-negating prophecy: one that induces corrective measures. Undoubtedly the most successful long-term economic forecast was Joseph's prediction to the Pharaoh of the fourteen-year agrarian business cycle. Others with less privileged information have fared less well. A founder of our own profession, Malthus, erroneously predicted long-term stagnation at the subsistence level, because he underestimated technical change (although for Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, the Malthusian projection appears closer to the mark). This essay reviews long-term forecasts from the last several decades in the area of international economics, to see whether patterns can be distinguished in their success or failure.