The Oxford Handbook of Computational Economics and Finance provides a survey of both the foundations of and recent advances in the frontiers of analysis and action. It is both historically and interdisciplinarily rich and also tightly connected to the rise of digital society. It begins with the conventional view of computational economics, including recent algorithmic development in computing rational expectations, volatility, and general equilibrium. It then moves from traditional computing in economics and finance to recent developments in natural computing, including applications of nature-inspired intelligence, genetic programming, swarm intelligence, and fuzzy logic. Also examined are recent developments of network and agent-based computing in economics. How these approaches are applied is examined in chapters on such subjects as trading robots and automated markets. The last part deals with the epistemology of simulation in its trinity form with the integration of simulation, computation, and dynamics. Distinctive is the focus on natural computationalism and the examination of the implications of intelligent machines for the future of computational economics and finance. Not merely individual robots, but whole integrated systems are extending their "immigration" to the world of Homo sapiens, or symbiogenesis.
Engineering skills and knowledge are foundational to technological innovation and development that drive long-term economic growth and help solve societal challenges. Therefore, to ensure national competitiveness and quality of life it is important to understand and to continuously adapt and improve the educational and career pathways of engineers in the United States. To gather this understanding it is necessary to study the people with the engineering skills and knowledge as well as the evolving system of institutions, policies, markets, people, and other resources that together prepare, deploy, and replenish the nation's engineering workforce. This report explores the characteristics and career choices of engineering graduates, particularly those with a BS or MS degree, who constitute the vast majority of degreed engineers, as well as the characteristics of those with non-engineering degrees who are employed as engineers in the United States. It provides insight into their educational and career pathways and related decision making, the forces that influence their decisions, and the implications for major elements of engineering education-to-workforce pathways.
First published in 1981, Labour Market Economics develops the basic economic theory of introductory courses within the context of labour market analysis and applies it both to particular features and special problems of the subject. The author begins by outlining the nature of the area and the structure of the UK labour market at the time, and proceeds to explain and elaborate the tools of theoretical analysis. These are then applied in subsequent chapters to a variety of issues, including the economic analysis of trade unions, collective bargaining and the effects of unions, unemployment, wage inflation and the inequality of pay. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on the economic theory of the labour market and the role of empirical work in testing its predictions, and wherever available, evidence from studies of the UK labour markets is cited.
Labor Markets and Business Cycles integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions--the cost of a job search--act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. Developing detailed search and matching models, Labor Markets and Business Cycles will be the main reference for those interested in the intersection of labor market dynamics and business cycle research.
Labour: A Heterodox Approach provides a theoretical reconstruction of the labour and job market by examining it in a rich historical context. It explores the fundamental implications of the theories of consumption and growth and aims at solving the difficulties raised by the dominant economic theories (neoclassical, Keynesian, supply side) by taking into account the dimension of the historical conflict of the labour market and the public intervention that results from it, such as the construction of a specific legal framework that is to say, labour law. The work focuses on providing a description of conflict and intervention, the market's leading characteristics, and demonstrates that they can be interpreted by introducing two major remedial hypotheses in economic fundamentals. It also contributes to solving several theoretical controversies and highlights the two main perspectives on the economic regulation of the labour market.
It is generally agreed that the operation of the labour market lies at the heart of macroeconomic activity. Following Keynes' attack on the postulates of the classics in The General Theory a number of labour market paradigms have been proposed including the Phillips curve, new classical and union bargaining models. These paradigms usually form the centrepiece of any good text on macroeconomic theory. Our purpose in this volume is not to restate these paradigms but to explore the extent to which they might be empirically modelled. To this end the volume includes a set of econometric models of the UK labour market where each contribution relates very closely to one of the principal paradigms. The purpose of this collection is threefold. First and foremost we wanted to present an integrated set of case studies in applied econometrics with reference to labour market modelling. In doing so we hope the volume will appeal to third year undergraduates and postgraduate students studying applied econometrics and labour economics. Secondly, the contributions have been carefully selected to illustrate the main paradigms since each contribution is intellectually self contained. It is arguable that this may be disadvantageous as far as the truth is concerned if eclecticism is preferable. On the other hand it has pedagogic advantages in drawing sharp distinctions between the various approaches.
Microsimulation Modelling of Taxation and the Labour Market reports new research on behavioural microsimulation modelling of tax and transfer systems. Its aims are twofold. Firstly, the book discusses the rationale for the basic modelling approach adopted and provides information on econometric methods used to estimate behavioural relationships. Secondly, it describes the Melbourne Institute Tax and Transfer Simulator (MITTS) in detail, explaining its main features, installation and use. After providing a broad review of tax modelling, the authors review alternative approaches to the analysis of labour supply behaviour, discuss the main components of behavioural microsimulation models and present econometric results concerning wage functions and preferences. They go on to provide a detailed description of MITTS, which was constructed by the authors in order to examine the implications of tax reforms in Australia.
First published in 1983. This text is designed to enable intermediate and advanced students to attain familiarity with the theoretical concepts used in labour market analysis, and to apply them fruitfully to the economic problem of labour markets. Each chapter of Section I deals with a different theoretical development of the basic labour market model of utility maximising labour supply and the marginal productivity theory of labour demand. In addition, the authors discuss in depth uncharted territory including the analysis of uncertainty and discrimination in labour markets and advances in human capital theory, in each case covering the implications both for equity and the efficient allocation of resources. Each chapter of Section II analyses an important economic problem - for instance wage determination, unemployment and inflation - using the theoretical insights derived from Section I. The contributions of different theoretical developments are assessed by reference to the current state of empirical research into labour market problems. This book stresses the interaction between labour market mechanisms and also between market and non-market forces in the belief that this will lead to a greater understanding of the operation of the labour market than can be gained by viewing each theoretical development in isolation from the others.
The need to understand the theories and applications of economic and finance risk has been clear to everyone since the financial crisis, and this collection of original essays proffers broad, high-level explanations of risk and uncertainty. The economics of risk and uncertainty is unlike most branches of economics in spanning from the individual decision-maker to the market (and indeed, social decisions), and ranging from purely theoretical analysis through individual experimentation, empirical analysis, and applied and policy decisions. It also has close and sometimes conflicting relationships with theoretical and applied statistics, and psychology. The aim of this volume is to provide an overview of diverse aspects of this field, ranging from classical and foundational work through current developments. - Presents coherent summaries of risk and uncertainty that inform major areas in economics and finance - Divides coverage between theoretical, empirical, and experimental findings - Makes the economics of risk and uncertainty accessible to scholars in fields outside economics