Futurologists and Economics

Research Recap submits: Changes in the natural gas and coal markets have increased economic risks for US coal power projects, according to Fitch ratings. Fitch says natural gas prices in North America are not tracking increases in crude oil prices; long-term U.S. natural gas prices are projected to remain lower due to shale gas development; and coal prices have remained on a higher plateau.

Claus Bjørn Jørgensen, Sigrid Suetens, Jean-Robert Tyran, 22 April 2011Japan’s trio of tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear disaster has left the world stunned. As this column points out, even the experts were shocked. But while these events were highly unlikely, they were still possible. This column uses evidence from the Danish lottery to show that people tend to adjust their expectations of future events based on only small pockets of recent experience, often at their cost.

Back when I started playing computer games, there was this guy named “Fatal1ty” who was so good at First-Person Shooters like Quake, he inadvertently created the “eSports” industry. It began with the Cyberathlete Professional League founded in Dallas in 1997.

Scenario planning is a popular way to think about possible futures. In scenario planning, one seeks a modest number of scenarios that are each internally consistent, story-like, describe equilibrium rather than transitory situations, and are archetypal in representing clusters of relevant driving forces. The set of scenarios should cover a wide range of possibilities across key axes of uncertainty and disagreement.

This is the first post in a series exploring class divides across America's largest cities and metros. Social class, an inescapable presence in American life, influences almost every aspect of our culture. It is inscribed on our very geography. Although our cities are more than ever our most powerful economic engines, they also are becoming more divided along class lines, creating distinct experiences within a given city.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently issued a new working paper called “The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology” (free PDF), which should be of interest to people who are following “peak oil” issues.

University of Oregon economics professor Mark Thoma has an interesting article on the direction economics should be taking. Mark writes:

Ronald Rutherford submitsOn November 8th, I talked in terms of the ISM manufacturing report and structural rigidity {SR} at A Macro View: ISM October, More Structural Rigidity. SR, as I use it, is to describe the inflexibility of an economy to change from one state to another state.