Events and economic forecasting models

In the June 1972 issue of Futures, Olaf Helmer developed the idea of cross-impact analysis to include both events (singular occurrences) and trends (gradual developments).1 The present article pursues further this idea, using an econometric forecasting model to represent the economic trends in an economy, and a sequential cross-impact method to analyse the events which could change its course. The application of this idea, also described in the article, suggests a procedure for improving the communication between model builders and final users.