Building a Structural Model: Parameterization and Structurality

Economic Models for Policy Making

Over the past decades, many different kinds of models have been developed that have been of use to policy makers, but until now the different approaches have not been brought together with a view to enhancing the systematic unification and evaluation of these models. This new volume aims to fill this gap by bringing together four decades' worth of work by S. I. Cohen on economic modelling for policy making. Work on older models has been rewritten and brought fully up to date, and these older models have therefore been brought back to the fore, both to assess how they influenced more recent models and to see how they could be used today. The focus of the book is on models for development policies in developing economies, but there are some chapters that relate to economic policies in transition and developed economies. The policy areas covered are of typical interest in developing and transition economies. They include those relating to trade liberalisation reforms, sustainable development, industrial development, agrarian reform, growth and distribution, human resource development and education, public goods, and income transfers. Each chapter contains a brief assessment of the empirical literature on the economic effects of the policy measures discussed in the chapter. The book presents a platform of economic modelling that can serve as a refresher for practising professionals, as well as a reference companion for graduates engaging in economic modelling and policy preparations.

This chapter explains the logic of structural econometric models and compares them to other types of econometric models. We provide a framework researchers can use to develop and evaluate structural econometric models. This framework pays particular attention to describing different sources of unobservables in structural models. We use our framework to evaluate several literatures in industrial organization economics, including the literatures dealing with market power, product differentiation, auctions, regulation and entry.

Revista de Economia Política, 2015

This paper examines the structuralist tradition in economics, emphasizing the role that structures play in the economic growth of developing countries. Since the subject at hand is evidently too large to cover in a single article, an emphasis has been brought to bear upon the macroeconomic elements of such a tradition, while also exploring its methodological aspects. It begins by analysing some general aspects of structuralism in economics (its evolution and origins) associated with ECLAC thought, in this instance focusing on the dynamics of the center-periphery relationship. Thereafter, the macroeconomic structuralism derived from the works of is presented, followed by a presentation of neo-structuralism. Centred on the concept of systemic competitiveness, this approach defines a strategy to achieve the high road of globalization, understood here as an inevitable process in spite of its engagement being dependent on the policies adopted. The conclusions show the genuine contributions of this tradition to economic theory.

International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, 2019

In the study of macroeconomic models, we mainly start from a basic model, which explains the correlations that are established between the economic variables and the proportions that must exist between them, so that a balanced evolution can be achieved, which has the effect of at the macroeconomic level. The balance is not maintained automatically and therefore some measures must be taken to ensure the return of production to an appropriate level characterized by stability. Normally, unemployment is a balancing element in the sense that, when production is realized above market demands, a restructuring of the workforce is needed. This can be done through professional conversion or through unemployment. The issue regarding what is more advantageous, the production of unsold stocks at the level of the national economy or in a certain field, or the cessation of its production, with the effect of passing a number of employees into unemployment, must be addressed. Also, another element that causes distortions in maintaining the balance, which we find in the basic model, is that of inflation. Inflation, as opposed to deflation, is a factor that influences consumption and at the same time influences investment. Consumption is influenced in the sense that if inflation is very high, prices increase and then consumption is reduced. But all inflation causes a part of the monetary mass to be released and thus to return to the equilibrium element. Liquidity must be correlated with inflation and the mechanism of inflation.

History of Political Economy, 2015

The purposes and limitations of all types of models used in economics, past and beyond. This is the rather ambitious topic of Lawrence Boland's new book. The book reviews standard microeconomics, macroeconomics, game theory (including evolutionary), experimental economics, and econometrics (both micro and macro). In its mission statement, the book is declared methodology with a small 'm', to be distinguished with a capitalized Methodology discussed by Philosophers. Methodology discussed by Philosophers deals with lofty issues of 'Realism', 'Testing', and 'Explanation', whereas methodologists are interested in, well, such things as the realisticness of assumptions, the testing of models, and explanation. In the end, the biggest drawback of the book ends up being a seemingly aesthetic aversion to completely imagined capital letters. It is clear that the book discusses the very same issues that have vexed philosophers of science and philosophers of economics for at least the last few decades, and arguably for centuries, yet it refuses to engage these resources. This is a regrettable, but perhaps inevitable, consequence of the limits of any one person trying to cover the whole of economics and the relevant philosophy of economics. Boland begins with a thesis about a paradigm and generational shift in economic modeling around the beginning of the 1980s. Economists having their postgraduate studies in the 1980s or later no longer conceive models as being models of a theory, built in order to provide an instrument with which to empirically test that theory. Instead, model building began to be equated with theorizing itself. This shift is argued for in a concise, yet convincing manner. And this shift does not sit all that well with the Popperian spirit of Boland's Methodology (yes, with a capital 'M'). Although the book does not attempt to systematically build a single argument or an encompassing philosophical position, the overall message emerging from the discussion seems to be a plea for