Initial Conditions

Many years ago, I worked for the Office of Revenue and Tax Analysis at the State of Michigan and, from time to time, Saul Hymans and his colleagues from the University of Michigan would visit the state government in Lansing to discuss the latest output from their macro economic models of the U.S. and Michigan economies. As they started into their presentation, I was always eager to hear about their forecast. However, I was rather puzzled about how much time they devoted to the current quarter. I mean they had a big macroeconomic forecasting model – couldn’t we just skip the present and move on to the future?