On 2003-06-29, alypius skinner uttered to [EMAIL PROTECTED]: >But would this really give us economic models more useful than the >simplified ones currently used? Taking more factors into account may make >the models so hard to maximize that there is no net gain in predictive >accuracy. Thoughts, anyone?
I think rules are already a large part of economic reasoning. I mean, what are game theory and institutional economics if not rule based econ? Also, there are plenty of mathematical tools which can be used to maximize even hugely complicated rule based models -- there's a lot of theory and software for finite automata, Markov models and the like. (Presuming maximization is a concept which fits easily with rules.) Even if solving such systems exactly is infeasible, numerical solutions would appear tractable across the board. So yes, I think rules might have their place. It's just that they probably won't be needed in "easy", more or less competitive markets with money, but in inconventional ones like the marriage or public choice ones. (My first post, so I should probably introduce myself. I'm a 24-year old Finnish student of math and computer science. Economics is more or less a hobby to me, largely thanks to my libertarian political background. Armchair economics describes my interests perfectly: institutional econ, black markets, voting theory, market failures, the complications with IP rights, transaction cost economics, and so on. I'm looking forward to some interesting discussions.) -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
