> In industry it does. Every major bank and hedge fund employs economists, and generally they have a pretty good grasp of what's going on. Of course those model

> In industry it does. Every major bank and hedge fund employs economists, and generally they have a pretty good grasp of what's going on. Of course those models are kept secret, much like trading algorithms. How useful are those models, however? Without knowing much of the field, I do see the managed funds not outperforming index funds over the long term. Would the current run to the large unmanaged funds not demonstrate how limited their trade secret models are? In the case of automatic trading models, occasionally running wildly off the rails, there is probably still value, in that it does something we otherwise could not. A hedge fund manager that fails to outperform the index over the long term is not providing any value, except perhaps in providing a social function.