William P. Yohe

Spreadsheets in teaching economics

The availability and general characteristics of popular spreadsheet programs, especially LOTUS 1-2-3, are first discussed. Then the instructional uses of such programs in economics are surveyed, specifically spreadsheets simply as a computational environment, with such additional @functions as an enhanced computational environment, with content-specific templates as an instructional environment, and as the medium for computer-managed instruction. Keywords: @functions, CALC, spreadsheet (worksheet), template.

Instructional Microcomputing in Economics

This is not an exhaustive survey of current instructional uses of microcomputers in economics. Because much of the software has originated in a &dquo;cottage industry,&dquo; characterized by inexpensive local production and casual distribution of programs, and the subject has generally been avoided by economics journals, there is little formal record of what has been done. What follows is a series of longer commentaries on program types and developments in several major areas of economics and shorter notes on other areas. The information has been gleaned from various

Riker's method for assessing the significance of roll call votes

In the course of various studies of the political factors influencing the outcomes of monetary policy decision making in the United States, (2) the author has attempted to apply the ingenious method devised a few years ago by William H. Riker to assessing the published record of voting outcomes of the nearly two hundred decisions on current economic policy made in the last decade by the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System, especially the roughly one-fourth of the decisions in which dissents have occurred. It has been useful to generalize Rikers work by uncovering the properties of characteristic matrices of decisive voting outcomes and the relationships between these matrices and Rikers coefficient of significance of roll call votes. Several sources of a priori bias in Rikers specific measure of significance have been brought to light, particularly when the measure is used to make comparisons for the same or different voting bodies where any of the Riker coefficients lie at the high or low ends of his scale or where the differences among the coefficients is relatively small.

A quarterly model of the US economy during and after World War I

Abstract This paper develops a small simulation model of the US economy for the period 1915–1922. The focus of the model is to allow monetary and fiscal policy simulations to determine the impacts of alternate policies on total spending, real output, prices, and unemployment. The actual pattern of price-output movements during this period indicates a stable aggregate supply relationship. Thus, policy simulations of this type are appropriate for this period. Both monetary and fiscal policy measures have important impacts on demand, but simulations indicate that monetary disturbances account for the cyclical movements during this period.

Solution Techniques for Nonlinear Stochastic Growth Models: Editorial Note

A special issue of the American Statistical Association’s journal of Business & Economic Statistics (199D) was devoted to a summary article and ten reports comissioned by the multiuniversity nonlinear Rational Expectations Modelling Group, supported by the National Bureau of Economic Research. A simple test problem was devised, and a number of alternative numerical solution techniques were employed by various researchers. To facilitate comparison, each researcher was asked to generate time series and scatter plots for as many as possible of

Policy Simulations with a New St. Louis Model

In a sea of large, structural econometric models of the U.S. economy, built largely along lines inspired by the work of J. M. Keynes, one small, neoclassical, &dquo;monetarist&dquo; model has drifted since its first appearance in 1970.1 Built by members of the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,2 the model has received a series of changes and improvements and has periodically been updated. The most recent reestimation of the model occurred in 1986, but because of disturbances to the velocity of the narrow money stock (Ml) following financial deregulation, data only through 1984 were used. Because of the model’s inability to handle the substantial velocity decreases of 1985 and 1986, the money stock changes that actually occurred, if input to the model, produce unrealistically large rates of inflation and real GNP growth and extremely low unemployment rates. In order to produce a model that could be used to simulate the possible effects of alternative monetary and fiscal policy actions over the 1988-1990 period, the author had to alter the model to account for the infamous velocity changes. The model’s most important equation, the so-called Andersen-Jordan equation, explains the rate of change in the nominal GNP every quarter with the current and lagged rates of change in the Ml money stock; cyclically adjusted (&dquo;full employment&dquo;) federal government expenditures; and export expenditures. In the new version of the model, the coefficients on the rate of change in M rise and fall with the short-term interest rate. The rest of the model’s equations have also been reestimated to make use of data through 1987 and to shorten some of the distributed lag lengths. The first three parts of the program deal with the new version of the St. Louis model. Part 1 displays the new set of nine equations for the model. Part 2, with table and graphs, shows actual and fitted data for the 1983-1987 period. Part 3 features simulations over 1988-1990 of various monetary and fiscal policy operating strategies (both rules and discretion) and various movements of exports (including an option to tie exports to the Federal Reserve’s trade-weighted exchange rate index). Simulation results are shown in both tables and graphs. The basic St. Louis model treats the Ml money stock as the exoge-

Mr. Wright's Theory of Interest: Comment

Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see ones equation written out. — Santayana