[jollybean]

It's a bit backwards looking in that it can assess known quantities.

But far beyond 'Black Swan' events it's hard to account for innovations, geopolitical shifts, things that change the dynamic.

Plastics, the dishwasher, women in Engineering and the workplace, the birth-control pill and Rock and Roll combined to shift things in ways we could not put down in math, at least beforehand.

But the biggest 'black hole' is that it does not account for consumer surplus: we only measure what is bought and sold, at that price. We don't measure the leverage gained by consumers for cheap fashion, the benefits of more variety in goods, more vacation, shifting to bikes from cars etc..

The data is still a beneficial area of study however.