The rise of business forecasting agencies in the United States

About this book

This paper analyzes the rise of business and economic forecasting agencies in the United States. The field was developed by entrepreneurs like Roger Babson and James Brookmire following the Panic of 1907, and advanced by professional economists, like Irving Fisher and Warren Persons, after World War I. By the late- 1920s, about a dozen forecasters competed to sell businesspeople their predictions, usually in the form of weekly or monthly newsletters. Forecasters were part of a larger class of financial and managerial consultants who sought to refine business decision-making through the introduction of statistical data and scientific analysis. The failure of most forecasting agencies to predict the stock market crash of 1929, and to foresee the gravity of the ensuing depression, led to a crisis in the industry. Nonetheless, the pioneering group of forecasters shaped the core problems, and invented many of the techniques, that influenced the maturation of the industry in the decades that followed.