BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — After a year off the road, economists and faculty members at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in November renewed their tradition of presenting an economic forecast for the coming year in person to groups of community and business leaders around the state.
Kelley faculty presented their 2022 Business Outlook forecast in 10 cities around Indiana, beginning in Indianapolis, and were joined by local panelists from other IU campuses and other universities, offering perspectives on the global, national, state, and local economies and financial markets.
Those perspectives and the complete forecast are now available in the new winter issue of the Indiana Business Review, a publication from the Indiana Business Research Center that has been published since 1926. That special, year-end issue can be found online.
Included are articles about the global economy and more than a dozen urban areas across the state — including Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, Kokomo, South Bend and Elkhart and Terre Haute — as well as Louisville. There also are reports on the outlooks for the financial and housing markets.
The Kelley School has presented its national, state and local forecasts in various Indiana cities each year since 1972.
In addition to the Indiana Business Review, consumers, policymakers and business executives alike will find many other resources year round at the Indiana Business Research Center website. They include a number of versatile web-based tools, including Indiana’s leading resource for economic and demographic data, STATS Indiana; and a broader, national version, StatsAmerica.
Each year, it can be challenging for economists at Kelley, IU and partner schools around the state to prepare the forecast. That was particularly true this year, as acknowledged by the co-authors of the Indiana forecast, Timothy Slaper, co-director of the Indiana Business Research Center, and Ryan Brewer, associate professor of finance in the Division of Business at Indiana University Purdue University Columbus.
“Quotes and quips about forecast risks, uncertainty and the unprecedented economic conditions would not do justice to the uncharted terrain where the U.S. and Indiana economies find themselves,” Slaper and Brewer wrote in the introduction to their article. “Turn on the radio or peruse a news outlet, and it would seem that each day brings another type of economic fallout resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This doesn’t mean that all is lost, but it does make it a challenge to know how to prioritize the economic risks and potential threats.”