This book contributes substantively to the current state of the art of macroeconomic modeling by providing a method for modeling large collections of heterogeneous agents subject to nonpairwise externality called field effects, i.e. feedback of aggregate effects on individual agents or agents using state-dependent strategies. Adopting a level of microeconomic description that keeps track of compositions of fractions of agents by "types" or "strategies", time evolution of the microeconomic states is described by (backward) Chapman-Kolmogorov equations.

Reviews & endorsements

"Economists are indebted to Masanao Aoki. He has done an excellent job in bringing together a large amount of important material on stochastic dynamics, showing economists how to use it, and presenting it all in a clear and readable manner. The examples which he presents are interesting but surely only scratch the surface of what these tools can do to improve the realism and depth of economic modeling, macro and micro." Ken Judd, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

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Product details

• Date Published: February 1998
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521637695
• length: 308 pages

• dimensions: 230 x 153 x 19 mm
• weight: 0.425kg
• contains: 9 b/w illus.
• availability: Available