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Larry does Google
SCSUScholars —
A number of bloggers seem perplexed that Larry Summers is using Google Trends to get a feel for economic behavior. Ed Morrissey says: I wonder whether a Google search metric falls within the Keynesian or Friedman schools of economic thought. If I had to guess, which is apparently what Summers is doing when he’s not busy counting Google searches, I’d say it falls within the Marx school of economic thought …. Groucho Marx.But this really isn't news. Hal Varian and Hyunyoung Choi find that compared to time series analysis, including ...
Buy the premise, buy the bit
SCSUScholars —
... I think one can argue, as no doubt some critics will, that Chinn's judgment of "whether the analysis answered the question posed" is colored by the methodology he favors that is the result of his training. Go back to the criticism last week of Larry Summers' use of a Google trend as a forecasting tool. In a conversation with Ed Morrissey, Ed said "well that's a very indirect measurement." I replied "pretty much everything we do in macro is indirect measurement, proxies of varying qualities. You have to make some decision if there's enough quality." (I think my quote of Ed ...
