Economic Innovation: Keeping Corporations Competitive in the 21st Century
IRC Domain 8: Capital Markets & Capital Structure and Domain 9: Corporate Regulatory Compliance
Summary by Lisa Ciota
Speaker: Austan Goolsbee, Chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisers (2010 - 2011) and Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Austan Goolsbee riffed on the notion that while we know the past is not predictive of the future, economic forecasts are still overly reliant on historical data and assume a reversion to the mean. Not surprisingly then, economic forecasts often miss the mark because they don’t account for structural changes and uncertainties that may affect future outcomes.
While not predicting the future, Goolsbee is optimistic about the U.S. economy over the long run given key structural factors including positive demographic trends, a highly productive workforce, a deeply entrepreneurial culture and a federal government with a range of fiscal tools to manage future economic headwinds.