Control Theory And Dynamic Games In Economic Policy Analysis

This book deals with the stabilisation and control of centralised policy-making and its economic implications.

Giovanni Castellani Rector of the University of Venice This book contains the Proceedings of the Conference on "Economic Policy and Control Theory" which was held at the University of Venice (Italy) on 27 January-l February 1985. The goal of the Conference was to survey the main developments of control theory in economics, by emphasizing particularly new achievements in the analysis of dynamic economic models by con trol methods. The development of control theory is strictly related to the development of science and technology in the last forty years. Control theory was indeed applied mainly in engineering, and only in the sixties economists started using control methods for analys ing economic problems, even if some preliminary economic applica tions of calculus of variations, from which control theory was then developed, date back to the twenties. Applications of control theory in economics also had to solve new, complicated, problems, like those encountered in optimal growth models, or like the determination of the appropriate inter temporal social welfare function, of the policy horizon and the relative final state of the system, of the appropriate discount factor. Furthermore, the uncertainty characterizing economic models had to be taken into account, thus giving rise to the development of stochastic control theory in economics.

Econometric techniques and models are still being extensively used in the business of forecasting and policy advice. This book presents recent advances in the theory and applications of quantitative economic policy, with particular emphasis on fiscal and monetary policies in a European and global context. The volume honors Andrew Hughes Hallett, a pioneer and major scientist in quantitative economic policy analysis, whose contributors are among his friends and former students.

This volume contains papers presented at the IFAC symposium on Modeling and control of Economic Systems (SME 2001), which was held at the university of Klagenfurt, Austria. The symposium brought together scientists and users to explore current theoretical developments of modeling techniques for economic systems. It contains a section of plenary, invited and contributed papers presented at the SME 2001 symposium. The papers presented in this volume reflect advances both in methodology and in applications in the area of modeling and control of economic systems.

This book includes a collection of articles that present recent developments in the fields of optimization and dynamic game theory, economic dynamics, dynamic theory of the firm, and population dynamics and non standard applications of optimal control theory. The authors of the articles are well respected authorities in their fields and are known for their high quality research in the fields of optimization and economic dynamics.

In developing a new and highly innovative theory of economic policy, this book deals with conflicts between strategic actions by public and private agents. It builds on the Lucas critique but also applies the tools introduced by Tinbergen and Theil to dynamic policy games, and from there derives a new theory of economic policy. Its main propositions describe such properties in the models currently used for policy-making as neutrality and equilibrium existence, uniqueness, and multiplicity. These properties are key to understanding the impact of concepts such as rational expectations, time inconsistency, communication and the use of policy announcements. As the numerous examples show, they are useful both for model building and for devising optimal institutions. The Theory of Economic Policy in a Strategic Context is an essential but accessible tool for economic researchers involved in policy questions.

Dynamic game theory serves the purpose of including strategic interaction in decision making and is therefore often applied to economic problems. This book presents the state-of-the-art and directions for future research in dynamic game theory related to economics. It was initiated by contributors to the 12th Viennese Workshop on Optimal Control, Dynamic Games and Nonlinear Dynamics and combines a selection of papers from the workshop with invited papers of high quality.

This volume is centered around the issue of market design and resulting market dynamics. The economic crisis of 2007-2009 has once again highlighted the importance of a proper design of market protocols and institutional details for economic dynamics and macroeconomics. Papers in this volume capture institutional details of particular markets, behavioral details of agents' decision making as well as spillovers between markets and effects to the macroeconomy. Computational methods are used to replicate and understand market dynamics emerging from interaction of heterogeneous agents, and to develop models that have predictive power for complex market dynamics. Finally treatments of overlapping generations models and differential games with heterogeneous actors are provided.