Optimization Dynamics And Economic Analysis

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.

Foundations of Dynamic Economic Analysis presents a modern and thorough exposition of the fundamental mathematical formalism used to study optimal control theory, i.e., continuous time dynamic economic processes, and to interpret dynamic economic behavior. The style of presentation, with its continual emphasis on the economic interpretation of mathematics and models, distinguishes it from several other excellent texts on the subject. This approach is aided dramatically by introducing the dynamic envelope theorem and the method of comparative dynamics early in the exposition. Accordingly, motivated and economically revealing proofs of the transversality conditions come about by use of the dynamic envelope theorem. Furthermore, such sequencing of the material naturally leads to the development of the primal-dual method of comparative dynamics and dynamic duality theory, two modern approaches used to tease out the empirical content of optimal control models. The stylistic approach ultimately draws attention to the empirical richness of optimal control theory, a feature missing in virtually all other textbooks of this type.

Concise yet rigorous, this textbook provides a clear and systematic introduction to the theory and application of dynamic economic models.

One of the fundamental economic problems is one of making the best use of limited resources. As a result, mathematical optimisation methods play a crucial role in economic theory. Covering the use of such methods in applied and policy contexts, this book deals not only with the main techniques (linear programming, nonlinear optimisation and dynamic programming), but also emphasizes the art of model-building and discusses fields such as optimisation over time.

Some recent developments in the mathematics of optimization, including the concepts of invexity and quasimax, have not yet been applied to models of economic growth, and to finance and investment. Their applications to these areas are shown in this book.

Economic policy and operations research; Methods of linear programming: extension and applications; Nonlinear and dynamic programming; Sensitivity analysis in programming; Probabilistic programming methods; Models of firm behavior and other applications; Models of resource allocation and planning in educational institutions and systems; Models of decomposition or decentralization in firm behavior and economic policy; Operations research and complex social systems.

As an outgrowth of the advancement in modern control theory during the past 20 years, dynamic modeling and analysis of economic systems has become an important subject in the study of economic theory. Recent developments in dynamic utility, economic planning, and profit optimiza tion, for example, have been greatly influenced by results in optimal control, stabilization, estimation, optimization under conflicts, multi criteria optimization, control of large-scale systems, etc. The great success that has been achieved so far in utilizing modern control theory in economic systems should be attributed to the effort of control theorists as well as economists. Collaboration between the two groups of researchers has proven to be most successful in many instances; nevertheless, the gap between them has existed for some time. Whereas a control theorist frequently sets up a mathematically feasible model to obtain results that permit economic interpretations, an economist is concerned more with the fidelity of the model in representing a real world problem, and results that are obtained (through possibly less mathematical analysis) are due largely to economic insight. The papers appearing in this volume are divided into three parts. In Part I there are five papers on the application of control theory to economic planning. Part II contains five papers on exploration, exploita tion, and pricing of extractive natural resources. Finally, in Part III, some recent advances in large-scale systems and decentralized control appear.

This book presents a coherent and systematic exposition of the mathematical theory of the problems of optimization and stability. Both of these are topics central to economic analysis since the latter is so much concerned with the optimizing behaviour of economic agents and the stability of the interaction processes to which this gives rise. The topics covered include convexity, mathematical programming, fixed point theorems, comparative static analysis and duality, the stability of dynamic systems, the calculus of variations and optimal control theory. The authors present a more detailed and wide-ranging discussion of these topics than is to be found in the few books which attempt a similar coverage. Although the text deals with fairly advanced material, the mathematical prerequisites are minimised by the inclusion of an integrated mathematical review designed to make the text self-contained and accessible to the reader with only an elementary knowledge of calculus and linear algebra. A novel feature of the book is that it provides the reader with an understanding and feel for the kinds of mathematical techniques most useful for dealing with particular economic problems. This is achieved through an extensive use of a broad range of economic examples (rather than the numerical/algebraic examples so often found). This is suitable for use in advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses in economic analysis and should in addition prove a useful reference work for practising economists.