When economists talk, people listen.
And this year, people heard a message of economic stability.
At the 44th Annual Economic Conference, a host of speakers provided their vision of the economic future to a largely academic and professional crowd in the Rackham Amphitheatre.
Economics Prof. Saul Hymans, director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, delivered the opening economic forecast in which he predicted along with other researchers that the gross domestic product will grow by 2.4 percent and 2.3 percent for 1997 and 1998 respectively.
Both figures are relatively unchanged from this year's rate of increase.
Hymans covered topics ranging from economic growth to interest rates to inflation. He said researchers believe the U.S. economy will continue to expand over a moderate rate during the next two years. Unemployment is also expected to increase slightly through 1998.
"My job is to dope out what will happen as a result of economic policies pursued by the federal reserves," Hymans said.
Yet, some of the people in the audience did not agree with Hymans' conservative outlook. Les Koska, an adjunct lecturer at the University's Dearborn campus, said he thought Hymans' view of the economy was too pessimistic.
"There might be more growth than he is predicting," Koska said. "His model is heavily dependent on government spending. When government spending is weak, it pulls down his forecast."
Public Policy graduate student John Roman said he does not want to put too much stock in the predictions.
"It equates to a weather forecast," Roman said. "It is very accurate in the near future, but partly cloudy and seasonable from then on."
Blue Cross/Blue Shield employee John Katharopoulos comes each year to hear Hymans' economic forecast and pays attention to the indicators for changes in medical care and inflation.
"We come every year to find out what the U-M says," Katharopoulos said. "The forecasts are a bit conservative. The economic events are hard to predict, so I can understand why one goes to the conference."
One part of Hymans' speech that sparked debate concerned the trend of weakening productivity. Despite increasing capital investment and business downsizing, productivity is still decreasing nationwide.
Hymans speculated that this production mystery is a measurement problem resulting from the government's failure to produce an accurate estimate of growth.
Chikashi Moriguchi, a professor from Osaka University in Japan, and University economics Prof. Robert Barsky wound up the morning of the first day of the annual economic conference. Moriguchi predicted that 1997 will be a year of slow growth for the Japanese of approximately 1.6 percent.
Barsky's lecture focused on the unstable relationship between commodity price and inflation.
Hymans and colleagues Joan Crary and Janet Wolfe predicted a decrease in the federal deficit from $141 billion to $117 billion by fiscal year 1998.