We need better economic understanding.

Politicians are naive about economics, and people have few other places to look for guidance between the conflicting schools and models.

The United Nations should have a panel (similar to the IPCC) whose mandate is to look at the state of the art economic thinking from academia (mainstream economics, information economics, psychology) to give impartial advice to governments and media.

In particular, as with the IPCC this economics panel should collate various short term and longer term projected scenarios for how the world economy may progress as calculated by a collection of the best known economic models given a range of plausible assumptions.

The confidence in each of these models should be determined by how well they can model historical economic data and (more importantly) over time they should be assessed by how well their scenario based forecasts actually match what then happens.

At first this process may simply highlight how little we know or how little we can predict about the economy. However, it may give some tangible insights into which economic models are more plausible in light of real world data. It may also help to highlight specific areas of research that would most improve our understanding of and ability to model the economy.

Ultimately the aim of the process would be to provide evidential weight either for or against specific policy choices that governments should take to improve their economy in particular circumstances.

This plan comes from the Brigthon We20kender.