Word: forecaster
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Should doctors be paid extra for doing the right thing? The Hippocratic Oath aside, money goes a long way in coaxing doctors to provide better care - and health insurers are increasingly providing financial incentives that do just that. But while insurers forecast that cash bonuses will improve quality of care and lead to future cost savings, some experts question whether patients will...
...revived in the mid-1990s, as I mentioned, illustrating once again the resilience of the American economy.10 Since 1995, productivity has increased at about a 2-1/2 percent annual rate. A great deal of intellectual effort has been expended in trying to explain the recent performance and to forecast the future evolution of productivity. Much very good work has been conducted here at Harvard by Dale Jorgenson (my senior thesis adviser in 1975, by the way) and his colleagues, and other important research in the area has been done at the Federal Reserve Board.11 One key finding of that...
...poor forecasting record of economists is legendary, but I will make a forecast in which I am very confident: Whatever you expect your life and work to be like 10, 20, or 30 years from now, the reality will be quite different. In looking over the 30th anniversary report on my own class, I was struck by the great diversity of vocations and avocations that have engaged my classmates. To be sure, the volume was full of attorneys and physicians and professors as well as architects, engineers, editors, bankers, and even a few economists. Many listed the title "vice president...
...hurricane season starts Sunday, and if you're looking for a long-term storm forecast you can ask the Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science. Or you can ask someone like Bing, an elderly gentleman who used to cut lawns in my neck of Miami. Each year Bing would tell us what kind of hurricane season to expect. The key to his method was May: if it was a hot dry one, we'd better break out the window shutters; if it was cool and rainy, he'd tell us to relax. And he was usually right, especially...
...what about the scientists at Colorado State, considered one of the nation's premier hurricane forecast labs? In 2006 and 2007 they warned of unusually bad storm seasons, but both years turned out to be unusually calm. This year they see another depressing spate of depressions on the Atlantic horizon. Their latest forecast calls for 15 tropical storms, eight hurricanes and four strong hurricanes; a normal year sees about two-thirds of that activity. They might, of course, be proved right, but given their recent track record they also run the risk of crying wolf, which is part...