The Politics of Economic Models: An Inquiry Into the Possibilities and Limits Concerning the Rise of Macroeconomic Forecasting Models and What This Means for Policymaking

This dissertation studies the macroeconomic models that governments use for economic forecasts and asks what the political potential of economic models is, and how this potential plays out through time and in government negotiation processes. The dissertation analyzes Denmark as its case in order to study, on the one hand, the role that economic models have in policymaking, and on the other hand, which actors develop these models and for what purposes.
The dissertation contributes to the literature on the politics of economic models via three papers. The papers use qualitative methods (structured, focused analysis) to study how economic models are developed and used in Denmark. The empirical sources for the papers are archival documents from the Danish Ministry of Finance and Statistics Denmark, and interviews with economists and politicians who use and develop the models.