The ability to conceptualize an economic problem verbally, to formulate it as a mathematical model, and then represent the mathematics in software so that the model can be solved on a computer is a crucial skill for economists. Computational Economics contains well-known models--and some brand-new ones--designed to help students move from verbal to mathematical to computational representations in economic modeling. The authors' focus, however, is not just on solving the models, but also on developing the ability to modify them to reflect one's interest and point of view. The result is a book that enables students to be creative in developing models that are relevant to the economic problems of their times.
Unlike other computational economics textbooks, this book is organized around economic topics, among them macroeconomics, microeconomics, and finance. The authors employ various software systems--including MATLAB, Mathematica, GAMS, the nonlinear programming solver in Excel, and the database systems in Access--to enable students to use the most advantageous system. The book progresses from relatively simple models to more complex ones, and includes appendices on the ins and outs of running each program.
The book is intended for use by advanced undergraduates and professional economists and even, as a first exposure to computational economics, by graduate students.
- Organized by economic topics
- Progresses from simple to more complex models
- Includes instructions on numerous software systems
- Encourages customization and creativity
Autorentext
David A. Kendrick is the Yarborough Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. P. Ruben Mercado is Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Hans M. Amman is Professor of Computational Economics and Finance at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Zusammenfassung
The United States Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, set into motion a process of desegregation that would eventually transform American public schools. This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of how Brown's most visible effect--contact between students of different racial groups--has changed over the fifty years since the decision. Using both published and unpublished data on school enrollments from across the country, Charles Clotfelter uses measures of interracial contact, racial isolation, and segregation to chronicle the changes. He goes beyond previous studies by drawing on heretofore unanalyzed enrollment data covering the first decade after Brown, calculating segregation for metropolitan areas rather than just school districts, accounting for private schools, presenting recent information on segregation within schools, and measuring segregation in college enrollment. Two main conclusions emerge. First, interracial contact in American schools and colleges increased markedly over the period, with the most dramatic changes occurring in the previously segregated South. Second, despite this change, four main factors prevented even larger increases: white reluctance to accept racially mixed schools, the multiplicity of options for avoiding such schools, the willingness of local officials to accommodate the wishes of reluctant whites, and the eventual loss of will on the part of those who had been the strongest protagonists in the push for desegregation. Thus decreases in segregation within districts were partially offset by growing disparities between districts and by selected increases in private school enrollment.