Market Based Control

The prestigious journal IEEE Transactions on [tag]Evolutionary Computation[/tag] has a forthcoming special issue on “Evolutionary Computation for [tag]Finance[/tag] and [tag]Economics[/tag]“.  See details here (PDF file).  The submission deadline is 2006-12-31.

A simple point of view on the world proposed by Stanford: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/selene/cows.html. Slightly different definitions may also be found on the internet, such as:

• Socialism: You have two cows, you work and one is taken away to be given to another who has no cows because his have died due to neglect.
• Pure capitalism: You have two cows, you sell one and buy a bull.
• British Capitalism: You have two cows. Both are mad.

And to be fair with my colleagues:

• French Capitalism: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

Has anyone another definition to propose?

The latest issue of The Economist has a feature article on macro-economic models and their use for policy-making (may require subscription).

Shantayanan Devarajan, of the World Bank, and Sherman Robinson, of the International Food Policy Research Institute, point out that policymakers need not grasp exactly how a model works, any more than “a pilot needs to understand the insides of a flight simulator.” This may be true. But too many policymakers never even “fly” their models. They just want to know where they will land. If they were instead prepared to work through the simulations they might find inconsistencies in their thought, unforeseen implications of their policies, or new reasons for their actions. The big number that sums up a model’s story—$520 billion, 1.5% of world GDP, $4.4 trillion—is often the least interesting thing about it.

Reference:  ”Big questions and big numbers” (Economist, 2006/07/15-21).