COMMERCIAL PRINTING OUTLOOK -- Ambiguity is Certain

BY MARK SMITH

In the realm of economics, there is an important distinction between ambiguity and risk, asserts Andrew Paparozzi, chief economist and vice president of the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) in Paramus, NJ. People can come to terms with risk by first assessing the potential outcomes, then associating probabilities with the most likely results and ultimately deciding if the risk is worth taking. "With ambiguity, or uncertainty, you don't know what is likely to happen so you can't really assign probabilities to the different possible outcomes," Paparozzi explains. "That's a very different, and much more damaging, environment for the economy. Unfortunately, right now we're facing a lot of ambiguity."