MacroScope

There was an interesting slant to the forecasts in Wednesday’s Reuters poll about what’s next for the euro zone debt crisis.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a strong majority of economists from banks, brokers, wealth managers and research institutions thought the euro zone would survive the year intact.

But a detailed look at the survey results suggests the poll was subject to a certain amount of systemic bias. In other words, economists from institutions that have most to lose from any break-up of the euro zone were more likely to predict an optimistic outcome.

None of the almost 30 economists from German and French institutions said the euro zone would fail to make it to 2013 in its current form.

By contrast, out of the 10 economists who believed the currency union wouldn’t survive the year intact, seven worked for institutions outside the euro zone. Four of them were from Britain, where euroscepticism is running high.

While prejudice is much too strong a word, the geographic base of the institutions seems to sway the response of their economists.

So where does the truth lie? The few economists that predicted the onset of the Great Recession three years ago tended to be independent, rather than those who had a vested interest in talking up the economy (consciously or not).

With that in mind, a Reuters poll of academic economists and former policymakers late last November showed a firm majority thought the euro zone, as we know it now, will eventually fail.