One key field is economics, broadly defined. Governments, businesses, policy organizations, central banks, financial services firms, and economic consulting firms around the world routinely forecast major economic variables, such as gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment, consumption, investment, the price level, and interest rates. Governments use such forecasts to guide monetary and fiscal policy, and private firms use them for strategic planning, because economy-wide economic fluctuations typically have industry-level and firm-level effects. In addition to forecasting “standard” variables such as GDP, economists sometimes make more exotic forecasts, such as the stage of the business cycle that we’ll be in six months from now (expansion or contraction), the state of future stock market activity (bull or bear), or the state of future foreign exchange market activity (appreciation or depreciation). Again, such forecasts are of obvious use to both governments and firms – if they’re accurate!