Is he doing some of the best work in the area? Perhaps. Is he as good as some say? Definitely not.

As he sometimes acknowledges, the information he feeds into his models is incredibly important. He gets that information by interviewing experts in the field. One might be able to do better than any individual expert by merely averaging the opinions of several experts.

Good hour long interviews with him here: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita/