Forecasting 2021: Superforecasters’ Personal Expectations for the New Year (Part 2)

Written by

Forecasting 2021: Superforecasters’ Personal Expectations for the New Year (Part 2)

Clean energy meeting
“In hindsight, everyone will say they saw it coming.”

Turn of the year is traditionally the time when people like to make predictions. Professional Superforecasters do it better and see the future sooner. In celebrating the New Year, the Superforecasters challenged themselves to come up with 2021 predictions in each of three categories:

 Safe But Not Boring (events that are 75% or more likely to happen in 2021)

 Coin Flip (45%-55% likelihood of happening in 2021)

Long Shot (5%-25% likelihood of happening in 2021)

This is Part 2 of the Superforecasters’ personal* expectations for the new year. Here is the link to Part 1.

Real Actions, Not Just Rhetoric: Climate

: Despite extreme weather events, including bush fires and forest fires worldwide, 2021 may be a year of hope — and action — for the environment. The Superforecasters’ slam-dunk forecast on a US return to the Paris Agreement has already been realized. They also predict a new cap on CO2 emissions set in the US and Europe. The Biden climate agenda should involve massive infrastructure investment and serious commitment to carbon-neutral electricity generation by 2035.

“Real actions, not just rhetoric,” one Superforecaster® writes. “In hindsight, everyone will say they saw it coming.”

: Another Superforecaster is also optimistic: “The world will come to a realization that pandemics and climate change can’t be solved outside of a rules-based international system.”

Geopolitics

: In geopolitics, some Superforecasters foresee a US return to the Iran Nuclear Agreement…

: …and even small odds for the completion of US withdrawal from Afghanistan without an ensuing major increase in violence.

: The United States embassy to the nation of Israel is expected to be located in Jerusalem.

: Benjamin Netanyahu may have served his last day as prime minister of Israel in 2021, and Israel may normalize relations with at least one country in the MENA region.

: Over in the UK, Boris Johnson should still be PM, while the SNP should win the Scottish Parliament elections.

: Individual Superforecasters also predict failures of authoritarian/populist regimes over their handling of COVID-19…

: …with the possibility of protests or riots in at least one country due to the lack of access to the vaccines.

Diversity

: Starting with increased diversity in the Biden Cabinet, women should begin to make a dent in male-dominated professions, in both government and business.

“Equal percentages of men and women on boards will begin to be the norm, which will commence in 2021,” one Superforecaster predicts.

Technology: Solving the Last Mile Problem

: Virtual conference apps will continue their ascent in 2021. Starlink will be able to provide Internet connectivity anywhere in the world. The implications of this are less clear:

“This kind of global access is going to change things in ways we haven’t started to imagine yet, largely solving the last mile problem,” a Superforecaster writes.

: Kickstarting the remaking of transportation infrastructure, 2021 may see automated freight routes and customer delivery turn into standard operating practice.

: One Superforecaster goes further: “Amazon or Walmart will have an up-and-running robot delivery force in place to use in remote delivery areas as well as urban areas by Q4 2021.”

: Another Superforecaster gives odds, however small, of Tesla’s move toward full autonomous driving: “No passenger vehicle will be approved by the NHTSA for full autonomous driving AND Tesla Motors will update the software on at least one of its models to allow full autonomous driving.”

: Thanks to technological progress, a new vaccine might be developed for a major disease (e.g., malaria) by the end of 2021.

: On the other hand, this year might also see the first international crisis triggered by the use of deep fake technology.

* This article is based on views of individual Superforecasters, without aggregation. As Dr. Tetlock states in his book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, on average, teams are 23% more accurate than individuals. That’s why our Superforecasters work as teams, bringing out the best in each other. However, to celebrate the New Year, we broke this rule for this piece, presenting individual forecasts as opposed to well-reasoned aggregates.

Forecasting 2021: Superforecasters’ Personal Expectations for the New Year (Part 1)

Written by

Forecasting 2021: Superforecasters’ Personal Expectations for the New Year (Part 1)

Turn of the year is traditionally the time when people like to make predictions. Superforecasters do it better and see the future sooner. In the spirit of welcoming 2021, here is Part 1 of a two-part series sharing the Superforecasters’ personal* expectations for the new year. The Superforecasters kicked off this exercise, challenging themselves to come up with 2021 predictions in each of three categories:

 Safe But Not Boring (events that are 75% or more likely to happen in 2021)

 Coin Flip (45% – 55% likelihood of happening in 2021)

Long Shot (5% – 25% likelihood of happening in 2021)

COVID Recovery

: Vaccine distribution is expected to go well in the US, but regional pockets may refuse to inoculate at very high rates. The UK could complete its vaccination program by May.

: However, at least one Superforecaster predicts IT system failure in keeping track of inoculations, causing missed targets in the UK.

Not enough snow: Will snow days become “e-learning days” in 2021?

: While most Latin American governments are currently saying mass vaccine distribution will not start before 2022, one Superforecaster thinks they are underestimating the odds: “I expect mass campaigns to begin in nearly all of the region’s largest countries by Q3 of 2021.”

: Working from home is here to stay, with local public hot desk/office spaces and an increase in a “hybrid” work environment, e.g., gathering for periodic meetings, precluding workers’ need to commute five days a week.

: This, however, should spell disaster for commercial real estate sector, with one Superforecaster calling it a “slow-motion train wreck.”

No More Snow Days?

: More online learning is in the cards for schools and universities. “My kids’ generation will be the first to never experience snow days,” one Superforecaster writes. “These are now e-learning days.”

: In-person, large-scale academic and business conferences may return in the West.

: Travel could bounce back to 2019 levels, and before the end of the year, majority of airlines may require proof of vaccination as a precondition for international travel.

Economic Outlook

US economic recovery will largely depend on Americans’ decisions regarding inoculation, masks, and social distancing.

: One Superforecaster gives even odds that Americans will continue to ignore these measures, which would erode the economy into a recession.

: Another Superforecaster pins hopes on inoculation to enable a rapid recovery in the services sector in the second half of the year and a drop in unemployment under 4%.

: Fed is expected to keep interest rates near zero, and there should be a major stock market correction (20 pct +) in 2021.

: Will inflation in Q3 exceed 2%? It’s a coin flip.

: Meanwhile in the UK, employment and GDP should remain lower than in 2019, and UK car production is expected to drop below the 2019 level.

: At some point during the year, the British pound and euro should trade at 1:1. Another Superforecaster predicts the euro and Chinese yuan should end 2021 stronger versus USD.

* This article is based on views of individual Superforecasters, without aggregation. As Dr. Tetlock states in his book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, on average, teams are 23% more accurate than individuals. That’s why our Superforecasters work as teams, bringing out the best in each other. However, to celebrate the New Year, we broke this rule for this piece, presenting individual forecasts as opposed to well-reasoned aggregates.

How much does control of the Senate matter?

Written by

How Much Does Control of the Senate Matter?

Although seats occasionally change parties between elections, the Georgia runoffs are likely to determine partisan control of the Senate for the next two years. To get a sense of how much these elections matter, we posed four “conditional” questions on economic policy to the Superforecasters.

Bottom line up front: The Superforecasters see control of the Senate as having a large impact on the economic policies that the new administration will adopt, especially with respect to the top brackets for the long-term capital gains and corporate income taxes.

We’ll get to the detailed results shortly, after presenting some background on conditional questions.

How conditional questions work

Conditional questions present alternative scenarios. In this case, the two scenarios are:

    1. the Republicans retain control of the Senate (which will occur if the Republicans win at least one of the two Georgia seats), and
    2. the Democrats regain control of the Senate (which will only occur if the Democrats win both Georgia seats).

Forecasters estimate the probability that a given outcome will occur under each of the possible scenarios. For example, we posed the question “Before 1 January 2023, will legislation creating a ‘public option’ health insurance plan administered by the federal government become law?” and asked the Superforecasters to provide two different estimates of the likelihood that this outcome would occur: one if the Republicans control the Senate and the other if the Democrats regain control of the Senate.

Important to know: The probability estimates for the two scenarios do not have to add to 100%. In effect, each scenario is a stand-alone forecasting question, and the probabilities for each scenario can range from 0 to 100%.

If the Senate passes legislation relating to any of the policies, we will only score the branch of the conditional question that reflects which party was in power at that time. We will “void” (cancel) the other branch because that scenario would no longer apply.

Our questions

In addition to the public-option question, we asked Superforecasters about three other economic policies:

    • Before 1 January 2023, will legislation raising the top marginal tax rate for long-term capital gains in the U.S. to higher than 20% become law?
    • Before 1 January 2023, will legislation raising the top corporate tax rate in the U.S. to higher than 21% become law?, and
    • Before 1 January 2023, will the United States ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement and/or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)?

In each case, the Superforecasters are providing separate probability estimates for the Republican- and Democrat-controlled Senate scenarios.

Forecasts as of 10 December 2020

The Superforecasters see a Democrat-controlled Senate as crucial to the success of the two tax policies and the public option. Even under those “best of circumstances,” as of December 10th, Superforecasters rated all three policies as having lower odds than a coin toss. Raising the top corporate tax rate above 21% is estimated to be the most likely of these policies to be enacted, but the Superforecasters assign only a 46% probability to that outcome under a Democrat-controlled Senate.

In contrast, the Superforecasters see little chance that the US will join either the TPP or the CPTPP before 2023, regardless of who controls the Senate. If anything, they see a Republican-controlled Senate as slightly more likely to bring this outcome to pass.

Put another way, the Superforecasters currently do not expect the Biden administration to get signature economic policy initiatives through the next Congress unless the Democrats win both Georgia runoff elections. Increases to the top corporate tax rate is 46 times more likely if the Democrats control the Senate; increases to the top long-term capital gains tax rate and enactment of a public option for health care are each 11 times more likely if the Democrats win the Georgia runoffs. The stakes are genuinely high. One Superforecaster® stated,

If someone from two years in the future came back to Dec. 2020 and told me these [tax] hikes didn’t happen, my first thought would be that Biden must be a failed president.

Get early insight into major geopolitical, economic, technological, and public health questions that impact the future with our FutureFirst™ dashboard. If there are other policy forecasts you’d like to see, please contact us to explore ways in which we can make that information available.