Let us now examine have can the Managerial Economist best serve the management. He can serve the management best when he recognizes and adher to his responsibilities towards the management. The main responsibilities of a managerial economist are the following:
Responsibilities
1. To make reasonable profits on capital employed:
He must have strong conviction that profits are essential and his main obligation is to assist the management in earning reasonable profits on capital invested by the firm.
He should always help the management to enhance the capacity of the firm to earn profits. If he fails to discharge this responsibility then his academic knowledge, experience, expertise and business skill will be of no use to the firm.
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2. Successful forecasts:
It is necessary for the managerial economist to make successful forecasts by making in-depth study of internal and external factors that may have influence over the profitability or the working of the firm.
He must aim at lessening if not fully eliminating the risk involved in uncertainties. It is his major responsibility to alert management at the earliest possible time in case he discovers an error in his forecast, so that the management can make necessary changes and adjustment in the policies and programmes of the firm.
A managerial economist is supposed to forecast the trends in the activities of importance to the firm such as sales, profit, demand, costs, competition, etc.
He must inform the management about the trend turning point of business activities of the firm.
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He must be willing to make considered and fairly positive statement about occurring economic development.
3. Knowledge of sources of economic information’s:
A managerial economist should establish and maintain close contacts with specialists and data sources in order to collect quickly the relevant and valuable information in the field.
For this purpose he should develop personal relation with those having specialized knowledge of the field.
He should also join professional associations and take active part in their activities. His success depends on how quickly he gathers additional information’s to serve best the interest of the firm.
4. His Status in the Firm:
A managerial economist must earn full status in the business team because only then he can be really helpful to the management in formulating successful business policies.
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He should be ready and even offer himself to take up special assignments. He is to win continuing support for his professional ideas by performing his functions efficiently in an atmosphere where his resources and advice are widely sought and used.
He should express his ideas and suggestions in simple and understandable language with minimum use of technical words, while communicating with his management executives.
It is clear from the above discussion that managerial economists perform many and varied functions.
However, of these, marketing function, i.e. sales forecasting and industrial market research has been the most important.
For carrying out their functions, they may have to undertake detailed statistical analysis. Thus, managerial economists help the management a lot in discharging its function of making decisions and formulating forward plans.
Managerial economist must see that his responsibilities and functions are successfully discharged.
He can give the firm a profitable growth and his presence should be an effective solution to the complex problems of the management.
