Today's economies depend heavily on one another through international trade. To model them pr... more Today's economies depend heavily on one another through international trade. To model them properly, the models need to depend on one another. For the models to work together, they must observe similar conventions for input and output of data, and ways of specifying alternative futures must be similar. At the same time, economies are very different and the models describing them must have much freedom for diversity in internal structure. These simple ideas are the foundation of a gradually evolving consortium of input-output models and their builders. By working together, much time can be saved by avoiding repetitious programming and very little freedom lost in model specification. What could never be done by one group may perhaps be accomplished together. Models are presently available for Japan, the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Britain. Models of Hungary and the Netherlands are under construction. Groups in Austria, South Korea, Sweden, Finland, and the German Democratic Republic expect to begin work on members of the family in the near future. This paper describes the steps in the construction of a national model in this family; it explains how scenarios may be specified and shows typical structures of the real and the price sides of these models. The plan for the international linking system is explained and progress towards its realization described.
Bartles was born to Paul and Martha Howell Bartles on November 10, 1930, and was raised in a fami... more Bartles was born to Paul and Martha Howell Bartles on November 10, 1930, and was raised in a family that had been in Nashville since the early 1800s. His maternal grandparents were both considered very musical, as were his parents. When Alfred was five, his father died from the aftereffects of poison gas in World War I. Thereafter, he and his mother lived with his mother's younger sister, Isabel Howell, who took on being a father to Alfred in many respects.
: During the summer of 1998, a group of independent experts was convened at the request of the Pr... more : During the summer of 1998, a group of independent experts was convened at the request of the President of the Institute for Defense Analyses to review IDA's work in developing the computer-based simulation game known as Synthetic Environments for National Security Estimates (SENSE). These experts were selected because of their recognized credentials in the fields of macroeconomics, the economics of transition economies, psychology and conflict resolution, and on-the-ground international aid activities. The panel observed and played SENSE games, and reviewed its technical underpinnings.
Two ways of making a product-to-product table are commonly recognized, one based on the product-t... more Two ways of making a product-to-product table are commonly recognized, one based on the product-technology assumption and the other on the industry-technology assumption. The second is recognized as highly implausible but is often used because the first frequently leads to small negative flows which make no economic sense. This paper shows how a slight adjustment in the product-technology assumption leads to an algorithm that is certain to avoid negative flows yet keep close to the spirit of the product- technology assumption. Some details of the application of this method to the USA table for 1992 are reported. Similar applications to every American table since 1958 have given consistently sensible results. A computer program for the method is included.
The Inforum international system connects multisectoral macroeconomic models of twelve major indu... more The Inforum international system connects multisectoral macroeconomic models of twelve major industrial countries via a model of bilateral trade flows at the level of 120 products. For this paper, the historical data and the forecasts to 2010 for seven of the countries - Italy, France, Spain, Germany, USA, Japan, and China - have been aggregated to 34 fairly comparable industries. The shifts in the industrial structure of employment between 1980 and 1995 are compared both among the countries and with the further shifts expected between 1995 and 2010. The countries are becoming more similar in that the share of agriculture in all of them is diminishing. In the structure of non-agricultural employment, however, they appear to be diverging. After pointing out a "low-tech drift" in the structure of Italian employment and a simultaneous drop in Italy's investment/GDP ratio, the paper asks: To what extent could Italy influence its industrial structure by increasing investmen...
"Burst of Fall" is a 1968 painting by the Alma W. Thomas, and African-American woman pa... more "Burst of Fall" is a 1968 painting by the Alma W. Thomas, and African-American woman painter of the Washington Color school. This brief note describes the circumstances of its origin and of its initial purchase. It includes as jpg image of the painting.
This is the story in tutorial form of the creation of a program, Gwx, for building economic model... more This is the story in tutorial form of the creation of a program, Gwx, for building economic models, both macroeconomic and multisectoral. The program closely resembles the G7 program. Like G7, it is written in C++ but it is built with free, open-source, cross-platform tools. There are many books about how to use some specific computer program but few about what was going on in the mind of the designer and programmer as the project evolved, as problems emerged and were solve. This is such a book. The program, Gwx, is designed to be used with the author's book, The Craft of Economic Modeling.
Near the end of the Paleozoic, there was a huge collision of most continental plates to create on... more Near the end of the Paleozoic, there was a huge collision of most continental plates to create one huge land mass called Pangea. This collision pushed up the Appalachians in America and the Vosges in Europe. Then the plates recoiled from one another. In the Triassic, the North American continent pulled away from the European. While there was later some big action on the American west coast, the eastern half of the continent settled into a peaceful life of erosion and deposition of sediments. Not so for what is now the Mediterranean. First, in the Triassic, the "jaw" between Africa and Europe opened wider, and out of the tear poured a material that made a green stone called ophiolite. These ophiolites on the bottom of the Mediterranean mark the areas where this tearing apart of the continents took place. As one would expect, most of it is in the middle of the Mediterranean, but there is also a narrow rim in the mountains of southern Spain, the central Alps, the Balkan peninsula and along the northwest coast of Italy that shows how large the tear was. The "jaw" between Europe and Africa was widest open at the end of the Jurassic. In the Cretaceous, it then began closing, with the subduction of the African plate under the European plate. A significant role in this process was played by a tectonic unit called Adria, variously interpreted as a long promontory of the African plate and as an independent microcontinent. Presently, this leg-shaped promontory lies under the Ionian sea, the heel of Italy, the Adriatic sea, and the Po valley. A series of paleogeographic maps showing what Europe may have looked like in earlier ages has been made by Ron Blakey, now Professor of Geology Emeritus at Northern Arizona University. He has graciously allowed them to be used here. The following pages show the Mediterranean area from the last three of the maps, those for the Eocene (said to be 50 million years ago), the Oligocene (25 million years ago) and the Miocene (13 million years ago). We are acustomed to thinking of Europe and of Italy in particular as the "Old World" and America as the "New World", but geologically speaking, the reverse is true. The extract (shown below) of Professor Blakey's map for North America in the Eocene-corresponding to the oldest of the European maps shown-reveals a shape readily recognizeable. Florida, Cape Cod, and the DelMarVa peninsula are missing, but the upland areas are all in place.
Today's economies depend heavily on one another through international trade. To model them pr... more Today's economies depend heavily on one another through international trade. To model them properly, the models need to depend on one another. For the models to work together, they must observe similar conventions for input and output of data, and ways of specifying alternative futures must be similar. At the same time, economies are very different and the models describing them must have much freedom for diversity in internal structure. These simple ideas are the foundation of a gradually evolving consortium of input-output models and their builders. By working together, much time can be saved by avoiding repetitious programming and very little freedom lost in model specification. What could never be done by one group may perhaps be accomplished together. Models are presently available for Japan, the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Britain. Models of Hungary and the Netherlands are under construction. Groups in Austria, South Korea, Sweden, Finland, and the German Democratic Republic expect to begin work on members of the family in the near future. This paper describes the steps in the construction of a national model in this family; it explains how scenarios may be specified and shows typical structures of the real and the price sides of these models. The plan for the international linking system is explained and progress towards its realization described.
Bartles was born to Paul and Martha Howell Bartles on November 10, 1930, and was raised in a fami... more Bartles was born to Paul and Martha Howell Bartles on November 10, 1930, and was raised in a family that had been in Nashville since the early 1800s. His maternal grandparents were both considered very musical, as were his parents. When Alfred was five, his father died from the aftereffects of poison gas in World War I. Thereafter, he and his mother lived with his mother's younger sister, Isabel Howell, who took on being a father to Alfred in many respects.
: During the summer of 1998, a group of independent experts was convened at the request of the Pr... more : During the summer of 1998, a group of independent experts was convened at the request of the President of the Institute for Defense Analyses to review IDA's work in developing the computer-based simulation game known as Synthetic Environments for National Security Estimates (SENSE). These experts were selected because of their recognized credentials in the fields of macroeconomics, the economics of transition economies, psychology and conflict resolution, and on-the-ground international aid activities. The panel observed and played SENSE games, and reviewed its technical underpinnings.
Two ways of making a product-to-product table are commonly recognized, one based on the product-t... more Two ways of making a product-to-product table are commonly recognized, one based on the product-technology assumption and the other on the industry-technology assumption. The second is recognized as highly implausible but is often used because the first frequently leads to small negative flows which make no economic sense. This paper shows how a slight adjustment in the product-technology assumption leads to an algorithm that is certain to avoid negative flows yet keep close to the spirit of the product- technology assumption. Some details of the application of this method to the USA table for 1992 are reported. Similar applications to every American table since 1958 have given consistently sensible results. A computer program for the method is included.
The Inforum international system connects multisectoral macroeconomic models of twelve major indu... more The Inforum international system connects multisectoral macroeconomic models of twelve major industrial countries via a model of bilateral trade flows at the level of 120 products. For this paper, the historical data and the forecasts to 2010 for seven of the countries - Italy, France, Spain, Germany, USA, Japan, and China - have been aggregated to 34 fairly comparable industries. The shifts in the industrial structure of employment between 1980 and 1995 are compared both among the countries and with the further shifts expected between 1995 and 2010. The countries are becoming more similar in that the share of agriculture in all of them is diminishing. In the structure of non-agricultural employment, however, they appear to be diverging. After pointing out a "low-tech drift" in the structure of Italian employment and a simultaneous drop in Italy's investment/GDP ratio, the paper asks: To what extent could Italy influence its industrial structure by increasing investmen...
"Burst of Fall" is a 1968 painting by the Alma W. Thomas, and African-American woman pa... more "Burst of Fall" is a 1968 painting by the Alma W. Thomas, and African-American woman painter of the Washington Color school. This brief note describes the circumstances of its origin and of its initial purchase. It includes as jpg image of the painting.
This is the story in tutorial form of the creation of a program, Gwx, for building economic model... more This is the story in tutorial form of the creation of a program, Gwx, for building economic models, both macroeconomic and multisectoral. The program closely resembles the G7 program. Like G7, it is written in C++ but it is built with free, open-source, cross-platform tools. There are many books about how to use some specific computer program but few about what was going on in the mind of the designer and programmer as the project evolved, as problems emerged and were solve. This is such a book. The program, Gwx, is designed to be used with the author's book, The Craft of Economic Modeling.
Near the end of the Paleozoic, there was a huge collision of most continental plates to create on... more Near the end of the Paleozoic, there was a huge collision of most continental plates to create one huge land mass called Pangea. This collision pushed up the Appalachians in America and the Vosges in Europe. Then the plates recoiled from one another. In the Triassic, the North American continent pulled away from the European. While there was later some big action on the American west coast, the eastern half of the continent settled into a peaceful life of erosion and deposition of sediments. Not so for what is now the Mediterranean. First, in the Triassic, the "jaw" between Africa and Europe opened wider, and out of the tear poured a material that made a green stone called ophiolite. These ophiolites on the bottom of the Mediterranean mark the areas where this tearing apart of the continents took place. As one would expect, most of it is in the middle of the Mediterranean, but there is also a narrow rim in the mountains of southern Spain, the central Alps, the Balkan peninsula and along the northwest coast of Italy that shows how large the tear was. The "jaw" between Europe and Africa was widest open at the end of the Jurassic. In the Cretaceous, it then began closing, with the subduction of the African plate under the European plate. A significant role in this process was played by a tectonic unit called Adria, variously interpreted as a long promontory of the African plate and as an independent microcontinent. Presently, this leg-shaped promontory lies under the Ionian sea, the heel of Italy, the Adriatic sea, and the Po valley. A series of paleogeographic maps showing what Europe may have looked like in earlier ages has been made by Ron Blakey, now Professor of Geology Emeritus at Northern Arizona University. He has graciously allowed them to be used here. The following pages show the Mediterranean area from the last three of the maps, those for the Eocene (said to be 50 million years ago), the Oligocene (25 million years ago) and the Miocene (13 million years ago). We are acustomed to thinking of Europe and of Italy in particular as the "Old World" and America as the "New World", but geologically speaking, the reverse is true. The extract (shown below) of Professor Blakey's map for North America in the Eocene-corresponding to the oldest of the European maps shown-reveals a shape readily recognizeable. Florida, Cape Cod, and the DelMarVa peninsula are missing, but the upland areas are all in place.
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