The OBR, Fiscal Forecasting, and the Politics of Economic Method

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores how the Office for Budget Responsibility conducts its forecasting work in practice, highlighting the intellectual and methodological choices that go into building a narrative of Britain’s medium-term economic trajectory. The politics of economic method thus shapes fiscal forecasting, with different models and assumptions reflecting differing the principles of political economy. While the OBR’s founding legislation forbids it from providing explicit political commentary on the British government’s economic policies, the agency’s mandated tasks of fiscal forecasting and oversight are essentially political. These duties necessarily entail the OBR taking a normative position on the principles of political economy and the UK economy. Asking what lies behind OBR judgements, the chapter outlines the OBR’s default New Keynesianism. Such normative stances are implied in the particular assumptions, techniques, and methods that the OBR employs in its economic forecasting, and in how it chooses to frame its narrative of the economy in light of the limitations of available data. These are all potential sites of contestation in a battle of economic ideas. Focusing on these sites therefore reveals the hidden politics of the technical realms in which economic ideas are implemented. The chapter charts OBR thinking about the cyclical fluctuation of the economy and ‘shocks’, and its re-evaluation of fiscal policy efficacy and fiscal multipliers, drawing on Keynesian insights. In delineating the relationships between economic theory, empirical evidence, and OBR modelling assumptions, the chapter exposes the myth of neutral, technocratic truth.