One thing that caught my attention during an economic outlook seminar this morning was how several economists made their presentations. First of all, they waayyy exceeded their allocated time to talk. Second, they had the compelling urge to put in every single economic fact in their presentation and elaborate each and every one of them. Third, they are indecisive and inconclusive. There’s always additional data to contradict their previous conclusions. In the end, what the audience got was 20+ minutes of data interpretation with no apparent conclusion and followup suggestions. Don’t get me wrong, (good) economists are smart people. This is probably the reason why they have so (or should it be, too) much to say in a presentation. They probably need to tone down their level of intelligence to actually communicate with us mere mortals. An idea: the simple way to do this is to start with a conclusion and argue with supporting relevant facts. This will save everyone’s time.

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