In “Excessive Ambitions," Jon Elster criticizes a wide range of social science aspirations to understand a complicated and evolving reality. Some of his analysis is to the point, but some is flawed, as explained in my comments. Crucially, however, his conclusions on empirical modeling are...

This article explains the basis for a theory of economic forecasting developed over the past decade by the authors. The research has resulted in numerous articles in academic journals, two monographs, Forecasting Economic Time Series, 1998, Cambridge University Press, and Forecasting...