Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

1.0 Introduction Consider a partial equilibrium model in which: Consumers demand to buy a certain quantity of a commodity, given its price. Firms produce (supply) a certain quantity of that commodity, given its price. This is a model of perfect competition, since the consumers and producers take the price as given. In this post, I try to present a model of the supply curve in which the managers of firms do not make systematic mistakes. This post is almost purely exposition. The...

Figure 1: Price Wicksell Effects in Example1.0 Introduction This post presents another example from my on-going simulation experiments. I am still focusing on simple models without the choice of technique. The example illustrates an economy in which price Wicksell effects are positive, for some ranges of the rate of profits, and negative for another range. 2.0 Technology I used my implementation of the Monte-Carlo method to generate 20,000 viable, random economies in which three...

Ian Wright has had a blog for about six months. Scott Carter announces that Sraffa's notes for are now available online. (The announcement is good for linking to Carter's paper explaining the arrangement of the notes.) David Glasner has been thinking about intertemporal equilibrium. Brian Romanchuk questions the use of models of infinitesimal agents in economics. (Some at ejmr say he is totally wrong, but others cannot make any sense of such models, either. I am not sure if my use of a...

Figure 1: Blowup of Distribution of Maximum Distance of Frontier from Straight Line1.0 Introduction This post is the third in a series. Here is the first, and here is the second. In this post, I am concerned with the probability that price Wicksell effects for a given technique are negative, positive, or both (for different rates of profits). A price Wicksell effect shows the change in the value of capital goods, for different rates of profits, for a technique. If a (non-zero) price...

For the purposes of this very simplified and schematic post, I present the CCC as having two sides. Views and achievements of Cambridge (UK) critics: Joan Robinson's argument for models set in historical time, not logical time. Mathematical results in comparing long-run positions: Reswitching. Capital reversing. Empirical results and applications. Rediscovery of the logic of the Classical theory of value and distribution. Arguments about the role that a given quantity of capital plays in...

Here are three: Anthony Giddens, in The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1999), advocates a renewed social democracy. He contrasts what he is advocating with neoliberalism, which he summarizes as, basically, Margaret Thatcher's approach. Giddens recognizes that more flexible labor markets will not bring full employment and argues that unregulated globalism, including unregulated international financial markets, is a danger that must be addressed. He stresses the importance of...

Figure 1: Random Patterns in Life and Flip Life1.0 Introduction I have occasionally posted about automata. A discussion with a colleague about Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science reminded me that I had started this post some time last year. This post has nothing to do with economics, albeit it does illustrate emergent behavior. And I have figures that are an eye test. I am subjectively original. But I assume somebody else has done this - that I am not objectively original. This...

Figure 1: National Income and Product Accounts1.0 Introduction This post contains some speculation about technical progress. 2.0 Non-Random Innovations and Almost Straight Wage Curves The theory of the production of commodities by means of commodities imposes one restriction on wage-rate of profits curves: They should be downward-sloping. They can be of any convexity. They are high-order polynomials, where the order depends on the number of produced commodities. So no reason exists why...

Figure 1: Blowup of Distribution of Maximum Rate of Profits This post extends the results from my last post. I think of the results presented here as providing information about the implementation of my simulation. I do not claim any implications about actually existing economies. I did not have any definite anticipations about what I would see. I suppose it could be of interest to regenerate these results where coefficients of production are randomly generated from some non-uniform...

Figure 1: Probability a Random Economy Will Be Viable I have begun working towards replicating certain simulation results reported by Stefano Zambelli's. At this point, I have implemented a capability to generate a random economy, where such an economy is characterized by a single technique. A technique is specified by a row vector of labor coefficients and a corresponding square Leontief input-output matrix. The labor coefficients are randomly generated from a uniform distribution on...