Forecasting the resurgence of the U.S. economy in 2010: An expert judgment approach

This paper describes a forecast, performed in December 2008, of the time of the recovery of the U.S. economy from the contraction that began in December 2007. As in two earlier papers, the forecast uses an expert judgment approach, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), within the framework of decision theory, as well as its generalization to dependence and feedback in the form of the Analytic Network Process (ANP). The findings of this paper are that the economy would begin its recovery in July–August, 2010. While forecasting is always hazardous, our 2001 paper successfully forecast the date the recovery began. Since 1920 the validating authority for the turnaround dates has traditionally been the widely recognized National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The Bureau usually releases an official statement with their finding many months after the event (and of course after the forecasts had been done). Our results on the month in which the recovery began in 2001 were confirmed by the NBER in July 2003. We will again await the NBER determination of the time of recovery from the current recession.