Table 1: Distribution of Votes Among Parties and Districts DistrictToriesWhigsTotalI5149100II5149100III3367100Total1351653001.0 Introduction This post, amazingly enough, is on current events. Stephanopoulos and McGhee have developed a formula, the efficiency gap, that measures the partisanship of the lines drawn for legislative districts. In this post, I present a numerical illustration of this formula and connect it to current events. I conclude with some questions. 2.0 Numerical Example...
Read More »Bifurcations And Switchpoints
I have organized a series of my posts together into a working paper, titled Bifurcations and Switch Points. Here is the abstract: This article analyzes structural instabilities, in a model of prices of production, associated with variations in coefficients of production, in industrial organization, and in the steady-state rate of growth. Numerical examples are provided, with illustrations, demonstrating that technological improvements or the creation of differential rates of profits can...
Read More »Bifurcation Analysis in a Model of Oligopoly
Figure 1: Bifurcation Diagram I have presented a model of prices of production in which the the rate of profits differs among industries. Such persistent differential rates of profits may be maintained because of perceptions by investors of different levels of risk among industries. Or they may reflect the ability of firms to maintain barriers to entry in different industries. In the latter case, the model is one of oligopoly. This post is based on a specific numeric example for...
Read More »Continued Bifurcation Analysis of a Reswitching Example
Figure 1: Bifurcation Diagram This post is a continuation of the analysis in this reswitching example. That post presents an example of reswitching in a model of the production of commodities by means of commodities. The example is one of an economy in which two commodities, iron and corn, are produced. Managers of firms know of two processes for producing iron and one process for producing corn. The definition of technology results in a choice between two techniques of production. The...
Read More »Perfect Competition With An Uncountable Infinity Of Firms
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...
Read More »Another Three-Commodity Example Of Price Wicksell Effects
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...
Read More »Price Wicksell Effects in Random Economies
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...
Read More »Distribution of Maximum Rate of Profits in Simulation
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...
Read More »I Just Simulated 6 Billion Random Economies
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...
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