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Economics Professor Presented at Conference in Washington, D.C.

Posted on Friday, February 3, 2012

Dr. David Cushman, Westminster College professor and chair of the Department of Economics and Business, presented "Mankiw vs. DeLong and Krugman on the CEA's Real GDP Forecasts in Early 2009: What Might a Times Series Statistician Have Said Based on ARIMA Techniques?" at the Southern Economic Association annual conference Nov. 19-21 in Washington, D.C.

According to Cushman, in early 2009 three prominent economics bloggers sharply disagreed on whether the incoming Obama administration's optimistic forecast for economic growth was likely to come true.

Greg Mankiw (Harvard) was quite skeptical, while Brad DeLong (University of California-Berkeley) and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman (Princeton) expressed high confidence in the Obama forecast.  Three years later, Mankiw has been proven correct.

Cushman's paper analyzes whether this would have been obvious back in 2009 to a statistician using a standard forecasting technique known as ARIMA.  Cushman's conclusion is that the ARIMA forecasts would have supported Mankiw's skepticism and given no support to the optimism of the Obama administration, DeLong, and Krugman.

Cushman, who holds the Captain William McKee Chair of Economics and Business, has been with Westminster since 2005.  He earned an undergraduate degree from Stetson University and master's degree and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.

Contact Cushman at (724) 946-7169 or email for additional information.

Dr. David Cushman