HOG CYCLE
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1558 ▶ |
| Object type |
A succession of more or less periodic gluts and shortages triggered by irrealistic forecastings based on spurious extrapolations (of the type “more of the same”)
The expression alludes to the known fact that, if there are few hogs (or any other commodity) on the market, they will fetch a high price.
This will induce many farmers to breed hogs, which results in a future glut of hogs and, inevitably, in a crash of their sales value.
- “Extrapolating from the present, (farmers) get the future wrong” (Economist 23.03.96, p.13)
The hog cycle is a good example of a forecasting trap.
Extrapolation from a short term trend is practically always wrong, because there are longer trends that supersede the shorter one. However, as this can also be true of the longer trends themselves, even the anticyclic view does not offer a very high degree of probability , and still less any certainty.