J. C. R. Rowley

Adaptive Economic Models

Adaptive Economic Models provides information pertinent to the adaptive processes in economics. This book discusses the developments on research in the field of adaptive economics. Organized into 23 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the study of economic processes using concepts of adaptation. This text then explains how concepts arising from biology can be formulated in such a way that they can be a source of insight into mans social systems. Other chapters present a general view of the adaptation of the firm to its environment and discuss how a firm with a definite commodity in mind can decide whether to enter a given established market. This book discusses as well the simple duopoly problem in which firms are in error in the sense that they specify an incomplete model and add a random error term. The final chapter deals with the set of models and problems for the development of a theory of money and financial institutions. This book is a valuable resource for economic theorists and economists.

The Sensitivity of Quarterly Models of Wage Determination to Aggregation Assumptions

In his A.E.A. Presidential Address, Tobin points out that due to the continuing controversy over the concept of a stable Phillips curve, the institutional features of the labour market have been largely ignored. Hence, the purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to present an analytical framework for the empirical investigation of these institutional labour market features, and (2) to present some empirical results demonstrating the gravity of the problem.

The Empirical Sensitivity of the Phillips Curve

Few economic concepts have become as em bedded in the calculus of governmental decision making as has the notion of a trade-off between in flation and the full employment of (labour) re sources. While the policy-makers conversion to the Phillips curve concept is perhaps understand able (since he can be absolved from a failure to attain one of two desirable objectives), the role of the research economist in the specification of an appropriate inflation-unemployment policy has been remarkably passive. The simple theory of the Phillips curve, and its obvious policy implications, were quickly incorporated into the generally ac cepted corpus of macroeconomics. Clearly, if such a trade-off curve exists and is stable, one would expect economic research to be directed toward two issues: (1) determination of the precise economic costs of inflation and unemployment to form bases for an assessment of optimality amongst attainable combinations of inflation and unemployment, and (2) theoretical analyses of various policies designed to shift the trade-off curve to more favourable positions. Surprisingly, very little substantive analytical work has come forward on either count. This is particularly true with respect to the first issue,1 and we are left with

Fixed Capital Formation in the British Economy, 1956-1965

Few econometric analyses dealing with aspects of the British post-war economy were available. In 1968, a study sponsored by the Brookings Institution was compelled to acknowledge the absence of any econometric investigation of the British system of investment incentives. In the following sections of this paper, this omission is remedied, and some empirical reults are tabulated for a group of models applied to data derived for one decade of the post-war British economy.

Statistical Foundations of Econometric Modelling.

This textbook provides an introduction to econometrics through a grounding in probability theory and statistical inference. The emphasis is on the concepts and ideas underlying probability theory and statistical inference, and on motivating the learning of them both at a formal and an intuitive level. It encourages the mastering of fundamental concepts and theoretical perspectives which guide the formulation and solution of problems in econometric modelling. This makes it an ideal introduction to empirical econometric modelling and the more advanced econometric literature. It is recommended for use on courses giving students a thorough grounding in econometrics at undergraduate or graduate level.

Decomposition of an aggregate measure of income distribution

Aggregate Gini coefficients, which are measures of the inequality of the distribution of income, can be decomposed in terms of types of income, provided the constituent coefficients are defined over family units ordered according to their total income. This decomposition provides a valuable means of examining cyclical shifts affecting income equality. However, other decompositions associated with specific socio-economic or demographic criteria are shown to yield collective expressions which contain both the distributional coefficients for the particular subgroups into which the population is classified, and significant interaction terms. These interaction terms prevent the identification of a clear relationship between the overall distribution of income and the distribution of income for each of the specified subgroups. Further research in this area should focus on distributions within structurally homogeneous groups, using informal procedures for linking these distributions to form impressions of aggregate developments.