My paper examining the accuracy of hurricane damage nowcasts is now out in the International Journal of Forecasting.

Open access link (until Jan 3) is here: tinyurl.com/4eztf7xx

Britain’s Famous Forecasting Failure.
38 years ago today Britain was blindsided by one of its worst storms.
18 lives lost, 15 million trees destroyed & a billion pounds worth of damage.
Almost no one, not even Britain’s trusted weather forecasters, had seen it coming. nyti.ms/4769vVV @nytimes.com

1. The philosophy of science sometimes gets an unearned reputation as a purely academic exercise that offers little by way of concrete tools for advancing research.

This is wrong.

And today, as we grapple with how AI is changing the nature of scientific activity, it's desperately wrong.

This is the second largest 2m revision on record. In general they get larger at cyclical turning points. We take more signal that we are at a cyclical turning point than that there is some data collection conspiracy

Inside the relentless race for AI capacity https://on.ft.com/3H9lQjf

Powell stressed today that the Fed's decisions will be based on how the economic data performs in coming months.
One problem: That data may be becoming less reliable.
My story on the BLS's latest cuts to CPI data collection:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/b... #EconSky

EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn.

BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS.
#EconSky

The BLS, which produces the CPI, told economists this week that a hiring freeze led the agency to cut back on the number of businesses where it checks prices.

Response rates for one data set increased in the April CPI as fewer businesses were surveyed

www.wsj.com/economy/cpi-...

This isn't good: "BLS is reducing sample in areas across the country. In April, BLS suspended CPI data collection entirely in Lincoln, NE, and Provo, UT. In June, BLS suspended collection entirely in Buffalo, NY." #EconSky
www.bls.gov/cpi/notices/...

More and more meteorologists are incorporating AI-powered weather models into their forecasting toolbox. This story starts with a new AI weather model built by Microsoft, but also provides a round-up of the recent rapid developments in this field. www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...

Did the Bank of England’s new scenarios achieve much?

I give it a “requires improvement” score, partly because they are just versions of the central scenario

on.ft.com/3RZ4SGd A bad scenario for the UK

New @budgetlab.bsky.social report about today's tariff announcement:

• The April 2nd policy alone is the equivalent of an 11.5pp increase in the effective tariff rate. When combined with other US tariffs in 2025, we're at 22 1/2%, the highest rate since 1909.
1/7

My chapter together with @ajsw.info
on "Forecasting the Macroeconomic Effects of Physical Climate Risk" has now been published in the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Macroeconomic Forecasting

Shared some thoughts on the growing challenge of insurability in the United States with the BBC. A growing number of eyeballs outside the US now paying attention to how the insurance market is handling increased natural catastrophe loss costs and growing hazard-related risks.

Xmas coming early: Really excited to publish a paper in the Journal of Econometrics w Felix Pretis & Xiyu Jiao!

Here's a short thread about what we do - and how we show the effects of outliers when estimating damages from climate change.

#EconSky Treasury's Office of Macroeconomic Analysis is hiring this year as well! Please spread the word and apply by 12/22: www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing....

📢 Call for papers!
📅 Deadline 8 Dec

In honour of Prof. Sir David Hendry's 80th birthday, the 26th Dynamic Econometrics Conference is coming to Oxford!

Mark your 📅 for 3-5 Apr 2024

www.dynamiceconometrics.com