Expert Failure

Soul searching continues among macroeconomists who failed to predict the economic crisis. One culprit behind the great macro-flub: the “Control Illusion,” in which economists are blinkered by overconfidence in computer models just because they, as Levitt recently wrote, “solve a problem that is really, really hard mathematically.” Speaking of the illusion of control: when it comes to which experts to listen to, people seem to value confidence over expertise. (HT: The Morning News)[%comments]