Mathematical economics is the application of mathematical methods to represent economic theories and analyze problems posed in economics.

It allows formulation and derivation of key relationships in a theory with clarity, generality, rigor, and simplicity. By convention, the applied methods refer to those beyond simple geometry, such as differential and integralcalculus, difference and differential equations, matrix algebra, and mathematical programming[1][2] and other computational methods.[3] Mathematics allows economists to form meaningful, testable propositions about many wide-ranging and complex subjects which could not be adequately expressed informally. Further, the language of mathematics allows economists to make clear, specific, positive claims about controversial or contentious subjects that would be impossible without mathematics.[4] Much of economic theory is currently presented in terms of mathematical economic models, a set of stylized and simplified mathematical relationships that clarify assumptions and implications.[5] Broad applications include: optimization problems as to goal equilibrium, whether of a household, business firm, or policy maker static (or equilibrium) analysis in which the economic unit (such as a household) or economic system (such as a market or the economy) is modeled as not changing comparative statics as to a change from one equilibrium to another induced by a change in one or more factors dynamic analysis, tracing changes in an economic system over time, for example from economic growth.[1][6][7] Formal economic modeling began in the 19th century with the use of differential calculus to represent and explain economic behavior, such as utility maximization, an early economic application of mathematical optimization. Economics became more mathematical as a discipline throughout the first half of the 20th century, but introduction of new and generalized techniques in the period around the Second World War, as in game theory, would greatly broaden the use of mathematical formulations in economics.[8][7] This rapid systematizing of economics alarmed critics of the discipline as well as some noted economists. John Maynard Keynes, Robert Heilbroner, Friedrich Hayek and others have criticized the broad use of mathematical models for human behavior, arguing that some human choices are irreducible to mathematics.
Contents
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1 History 1.1 Marginalists and the roots of neoclassical economics

o o

1.1.1 Augustin Cournot 1.1.2 Lon Walras 1.1.3 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

2 Modern mathematical economics 2.1 Differential calculus 2.2 Linear models

 o o o o o o o o o o o
8 Notes 9 External links

2.2.1 Input-output economics 2.3 Mathematical optimization 2.3.1 Linear optimization 2.3.2 Nonlinear programming 2.3.3 Variational calculus and optimal control 2.3.4 Functional analysis 2.4 Differential decline and rise 2.5 Game theory 2.6 Agent-based computational economics

3 Mathematicization of economics 4 Econometrics 4.1 Earlier work in econometrics 5 Application 6 Criticisms and defences 6.1 Adequacy of mathematics for qualitative and complicated economics 6.2 Testing predictions of mathematical economics 6.3 Mathematical economics as a form of pure mathematics 6.4 Defense of mathematical economics 7 Mathematical economists 7.1 19th century 7.2 20th century

[edit]History Main article: History of economic thought The use of mathematics in the service of social and economic analysis dates back to the 17th century. Then, mainly in German universities, a style of instruction emerged which dealt specifically with detailed presentation of data as it related to public administration. Gottfried Achenwall lectured in this fashion, coining the term statistics. At the same time, a small group of professors in England established a method of "reasoning by figures upon things relating to government" and referred to this practice as Political Arithmetick.[9] Sir William Petty wrote at length on issues that would later concern economists, such as taxation, Velocity of money and national income, but while his analysis was numerical, he rejected abstract mathematical methodology. Petty's use of detailed numerical data (along with John Graunt)

would influence statisticians and economists for some time, even though Petty's works were largely ignored by English scholars.[10] The mathematization of economics began in earnest in the 19th century. Most of the economic analysis of the time was what would later be called classical economics. Subjects were discussed and dispensed with through algebraic means, but calculus was not used. More importantly, until Johann Heinrich von Thnen's The Isolated State in 1826, economists did not develop explicit and abstract models for behavior in order to apply the tools of mathematics. Thnen's model of farmland use represents the first example of marginal analysis.[11] Thnen's work was largely theoretical, but he also mined empirical data in order to attempt to support his generalizations. In comparison to his contemporaries, Thnen built economic models and tools, rather than applying previous tools to new problems.[12] Meanwhile a new cohort of scholars trained in the mathematical methods of the physical sciences gravitated to economics, advocating and applying those methods to their subject,[13] and described today as moving from geometry to mechanics.[14] These included W.S. Jevons who presented paper on a "general mathematical theory of political economy" in 1862, providing an outline for use of the theory of marginal utility in political economy.[15] In 1871, he published The Principles of Political Economy, declaring that the subject as science "must be mathematical simply because it deals with quantities." Jevons expected the only collection of statistics for price and quantities would permit the subject as presented to become an exact science.[16] Others preceded and followed in expanding mathematical representations of economic problems. [edit]Marginalists

and the roots of neoclassical economics

Main article: Marginalism

Equilibrium quantities as a solution to two reaction functions in Cournot duopoly. Each reaction function is expressed as a linear equation dependent upon quantity demanded.

Augustin Cournot and Lon Walras built the tools of the discipline axiomatically around utility, arguing that individuals sought to maximize their utility across choices in a way that could be described mathematically.[17]At the time, it was thought that utility was quantifiable, in units known as utils.

[18]

Cournot, Walras and Francis Ysidro Edgeworth are considered the precursors to modern mathematical economics.[19] [edit]Augustin Cournot Cournot, a professor of Mathematics, developed a mathematical treatment in 1838 for duopolya market condition defined by competition between two sellers.[19] This treatment of competition, first published inResearches into the Mathematical Principles of Wealth,[20] is referred to as Cournot duopoly. It is assumed that both sellers had equal access to the market and could produce their goods without cost. Further, it assumed that both goods were homogeneous. Each seller would vary her output based on the output of the other and the market price would be determined by the total quantity supplied. The profit for each firm would be determined by multiplying their output and the per unit Market price. Differentiating the profit function with respect to quantity supplied for each firm left a system of linear equations, the simultaneous solution of which gave the equilibrium quantity, price and profits.[21] Cournot's contributions to the mathematization of economics would be neglected for decades, but eventually influenced many of the marginalists.[21][22] Cournot's models of duopoly and Oligopoly also represent one of the first formulations of non-cooperative games. Today the solution can be given as a Nash equilibrium but Cournot's work preceded modern Game theory by over 100 years.[23] [edit]Lon Walras While Cournot provided a solution for what would later be called partial equilibrium, Lon Walras attempted to formalize discussion of the economy as a whole through a theory of general competitive equilibrium. The behavior of every economic actor would be considered on both the production and consumption side. Walras originally presented four separate models of exchange, each recursively included in the next. The solution of the resulting system of equations (both linear and non-linear) is the general equilibrium.[24] At the time, no general solution could be expressed for a system of arbitrarily many equations, but Walras's attempts produced two famous results in economics. The first is Walras' law and the second is the principle of ttonnement. Walras' method was considered highly mathematical for the time and Edgeworth commented at length about this fact in his review of lments d'conomie politique pure (Elements of Pure Economics).[25] Walras' law was introduced as a theoretical answer to the problem of determining the solutions in general equilibrium. His notation is different from modern notation but can be constructed using more modern summation notation. Walras assumed that in equilibrium, all money would be spent on all goods: every good would be sold at the market price for that good and every buyer would expend their last dollar on a basket of goods. Starting from this assumption, Walras could then show that if there were n markets and n-1 markets cleared (reached equilibrium conditions) that the nth market would clear as well. This is easiest to visualize with two markets (considered in most texts as a market for goods and a market for money). If one of two markets has reached an equilibrium state, no additional goods (or conversely, money) can enter or exit the second market, so it must be in a state of equilibrium as well. Walras used this statement to move toward a proof of existence of solutions to general equilibrium but it is commonly used today to illustrate market clearing in money markets at the undergraduate level.[26] Ttonnement (roughly, French for groping toward) was meant to serve as the practical expression of Walrasian general equilibrium. Walras abstracted the marketplace as an auction of goods where the auctioneer would call out prices and market participants would wait until they could each satisfy their personal reservation prices for the quantity desired (remembering here that this is an auction on all goods, so everyone has a reservation price for their desired basket of goods).[27]

Only when all buyers are satisfied with the given market price would transactions occur. The market would "clear" at that priceno surplus or shortage would exist. The word ttonnement is used to describe the directions the market takes in groping toward equilibrium, settling high or low prices on different goods until a price is agreed upon for all goods. While the process appears dynamic, Walras only presented a static model, as no transactions would occur until all markets were in equilibrium. In practice very few markets operate in this manner.[28] [edit]Francis Ysidro Edgeworth Edgeworth introduced mathematical elements to Economics explicitly in Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences, published in 1881.[29] He adopted Jeremy Bentham's felicific calculus to economic behavior, allowing the outcome of each decision to be converted into a change in utility.[30] Using this assumption, Edgeworth built a model of exchange on three assumptions: individuals are self interested, individuals act to maximize utility, and individuals are "free to recontract with another independently of...any third party."[31]

An Edgeworth box displaying the contract curve an economy with two participants. Referred to as the "core" of the economy in modern parlance, there are infinitely many solutions along the curve for economies with two participants[32]

Given two individuals, the set of solutions where the both individuals can maximize utility is described by the contract curve on what is now known as an Edgeworth Box. Technically, the construction of the twoperson solution to Edgeworth's problem was not developed graphically until 1924 by Arthur Lyon Bowley. [33] The contract curve of the Edgeworth box (or more generally on any set of solutions to Edgeworth's problem for more actors) is referred to as the core of an economy.[34] Edgeworth devoted considerable effort to insisting that mathematical proofs were appropriate for all schools of thought in economics. While at the helm of The Economic Journal, he published several articles criticizing the mathematical rigor of rival researchers, including Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman, a noted skeptic of mathematical economics.[35] The articles focused on a back and forth over tax incidence and responses by producers. Edgeworth noticed that a monopoly producing a good that had jointness of supply but not jointness of demand (such as first class and economy on an airplane, if the plane flies, both sets of seats fly with it) might actually lower the price seen by the consumer for one of the

two commodities if a tax were applied. Common sense and more traditional, numerical analysis seemed to indicate that this was preposterous. Seligman insisted that the results Edgeworth achieved were a quirk of his mathematical formulation. He suggested that the assumption of a continuous demand function and an infinitesimal change in the tax resulted in the paradoxical predictions. Harold Hotelling later showed that Edgeworth was correct and that the same result (a "diminution of price as a result of the tax") could occur with a discontinuous demand function and large changes in the tax rate).[36] [edit]Modern

mathematical economics

From the later-1930s, an array of new mathematical tools from the differential calculus and differential equations, convex sets, and graph theory were deployed to advance economic theory in a way similar to new mathematical methods earlier applied to physics.[37][8] The process was later described as moving frommechanics to axiomatics.[38] [edit]Differential

calculus

Main articles: Foundations of Economic Analysis and Differential calculus See also: Pareto efficiency and Walrasian auction Vilfredo Pareto analyzed microeconomics by treating decisions by economic actors as attempts to change a given allotment of goods to another, more preferred allotment. Sets of allocations could then be treated as Pareto efficient (Pareto optimal is an equivalent term) when no exchanges could occur between actors that could make at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse off.[39] Pareto's proof is commonly conflated with Walrassian equilibrium or informally ascribed to Adam Smith's Invisible hand hypothesis.[40] Rather, Pareto's statement was the first formal assertion of what would be known as the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics.[41] These models lacked the inequalities of the next generation of mathematical economics. In the landmark treatise Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947), Paul Samuelson identified a common paradigm and mathematical structure across multiple fields in the subject, building on previous work by Alfred Marshall. Foundations took mathematical concepts from physics and applied them to economic problems. This broad view (for example, comparing Le Chatelier's principle to ttonnement) drives the fundamental premise of mathematical economics: systems of economic actors may be modeled and their behavior described much like any other system. This extension followed on the work of the marginalists in the previous century and extended it significantly. Samuelson approached the problems of applying individual utility maximization over aggregate groups with comparative statics, which compares two different equilibrium states after an exogenous change in a variable. This and other methods in the book provided the foundation for mathematical economics in the 20th century.[7][42] [edit]Linear

models

See also: Linear algebra, Linear programming, and PerronFrobenius theorem Restricted models of general equilibrium were formulated by John von Neumann in 1937.[43] Unlike earlier versions, the models of von Neumann had inequality constraints. For his model of an expanding economy, von Neumann proved the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium using his generalization of Brouwer's fixed point theorem. Von Neumann's model of an expanding economy considered the matrix pencil A - B with nonnegative matrices A and B; von Neumann sought probability vectors p and q and a positive number that would solve the complementarity equation

pT (A - B) q = 0, along with two inequality systems expressing economic efficiency. In this model, the (transposed) probability vector p represents the prices of the goods while the probability vector q represents the "intensity" at which the production process would run. The unique solution represents the rate of growth of the economy, which equals the interest rate. Proving the existence of a positive growth rate and proving that the growth rate equals the interest rate were remarkable achievements, even for von Neumann.[44][45][46] Von Neumann's results have been viewed as a special case of linear programming, where von Neumann's model uses only nonnegative matrices.[47] The study of von Neumann's model of an expanding economy continues to interest mathematical economists with interests in computational economics.[48][49][50] [edit]Input-output economics Main article: Input-output model In 1936, the Russianborn economist Wassily Leontief built his model of input-output analysis from the 'material balance' tables constructed by Soviet economists, which themselves followed earlier work by the physiocrats. With his model, which described a system of production and demand processes, Leontief described how changes in demand in one economic sector would influence production in another.[51] In practice, Leontief estimated the coefficients of his simple models, to address economically interesting questions. In production economics, "Leontief technologies" produce outputs using constant proportions of inputs, regardless of the price of inputs, reducing the value of Leontief models for understanding economies but allowing their parameters to be estimated relatively easily. In contrast, the von Neumann model of an expanding economy allows for choice of techniques, but the coefficients must be estimated for each technology.[52][53] [edit]Mathematical

optimization

Red dot in z direction as maximum forparaboloid function of (x, y) inputs

Main articles: Mathematical optimization and Dual problem See also: Convexity in economics and Non-convexity (economics) In mathematics, mathematical optimization (or optimization or mathematical programming) refers to the selection of a best element from some set of available alternatives.[54] In the simplest case, an optimization problem involvesmaximizing or minimizing a real function by selecting input values of the function and computing the correspondingvalues of the function. The solution process includes satisfying general necessary and sufficient conditions for optimality. For optimization

problems, specialized notation may be used as to the function and its input(s). More generally, optimization includes finding the best available element of some function given a defined domain and may use a variety of different computational optimization techniques.[55] Economics is closely enough linked to optimization by agents in an economy that an influential definition relatedly describes economics qua science as the "study of human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means" with alternative uses.[56] Optimization problems run through modern economics, many with explicit economic or technical constraints. In microeconomics, the utility maximization problem and its dual problem, the expenditure minimization problem for a given level of utility, are economic optimization problems.[57] Theory posits that consumers maximize their utility, subject to their budget constraints and that firms maximize their profits, subject to their production functions, input costs, and market demand.[58] Economic equilibrium is studied in optimization theory as a key ingredient of economic theorems that in principle could be tested against empirical data.[7][59]Newer developments have occurred in dynamic programming and modeling optimization with risk and uncertainty, including applications to portfolio theory, theeconomics of information, and search theory.[58] Optimality properties for an entire market system may be stated in mathematical terms, as in formulation of the two fundamental theorems of welfare economics[60]and in the ArrowDebreu model of general equilibrium (also discussed below).[61] More concretely, many problems are amenable to analytical (formulaic) solution. Many others may be sufficiently complex to require numerical methods of solution, aided by software.[55] Still others are complex but tractable enough to allowcomputable methods of solution, in particular computable general equilibrium models for the entire economy.[62] Linear and nonlinear programming have profoundly affected microeconomics, which had earlier considered only equality constraints.[63] Many of the mathematical economists who received Nobel Prizes in Economics had conducted notable research using linear programming: Leonid Kantorovich, Leonid Hurwicz, Tjalling Koopmans, Kenneth J. Arrow, and Robert Dorfman, Paul Samuelson, and Robert Solow.[64] Both Kantorovich and Koopmans acknowledged that George B. Dantzigdeserved to share their Nobel Prize for linear programming. Economists who conducted research in nonlinear programming also have won the Nobel prize, notablyRagnar Frisch in addition to Kantorovich, Hurwicz, Koopmans, Arrow, and Samuelson. [edit]Linear optimization Main articles: Linear programming and Simplex algorithm Linear programming was developed to aid the allocation of resources in firms and in industries during the 1930s in Russia and during the 1940s in the United States. During the Berlin airlift (1948), linear programming was used to plan the shipment of supplies to prevent Berlin from starving after the Soviet blockade.[65][66] [edit]Nonlinear programming See also: Nonlinear programming, Lagrangian multiplier, KarushKuhnTucker conditions, and Shadow price Extensions to nonlinear optimization with inequality constraints were achieved in 1951 by Albert W. Tucker and Harold Kuhn, who considered the nonlinearoptimization problem:

Minimize f(x) subject to gi(x) 0 and hj(x) = 0 where

f(.) is the function to be minimized gi(.) (j = 1, ..., m) are the functions of the m inequality constraints hj(.) (j = 1, ..., l) are the functions of the l equality constraints.
In allowing inequality constraints, the KuhnTucker approach generalized the classic method of Lagrange multipliers, which (until then) had allowed only equality constraints.[67] The KuhnTucker approach inspired further research on Lagrangian duality, including the treatment of inequality constraints.[68][69] The duality theory of nonlinear programming is particularly satisfactory when applied to convex minimization problems, which enjoy the convex-analytic duality theory ofFenchel and Rockafellar; this convex duality is particularly strong for polyhedral convex functions, such as those arising in linear programming. Lagrangian duality and convex analysis are used daily in operations research, in the scheduling of power plants, the planning of production schedules for factories, and the routing of airlines (routes, flights, planes, crews).[69] [edit]Variational calculus and optimal control See also: Calculus of variations, Optimal control, and Dynamic programming Economic dynamics allows for changes in economic variables over time, including in dynamic systems. The problem of finding optimal functions for such changes is studied in variational calculus and in optimal control theory. Before the Second World War, Frank Ramsey and Harold Hotelling used the calculus of variations to that end. Following Richard Bellman's work on dynamic programming and the 1962 English translation of L. Pontryagin et al.'s earlier work,[70] optimal control theory was used more extensively in economics in addressing dynamic problems, especially as to economic growth equilibrium and stability of economic systems,[71] of which a textbook example is optimal consumption and saving.[72] A crucial distinction is between deterministic and stochastic control models.[73] Other applications of optimal control theory include those in finance, inventories, and production for example.[74] [edit]Functional analysis See also: Functional analysis, Convex set, Supporting hyperplane, HahnBanach theorem, Fixed point theorem, and Dual space It was in the course of proving of the existence of an optimal equilibrium in his 1937 model of economic growth that John von Neumann introduced functional analytic methods to include topology in economic theory, in particular, fixed-point theory through his generalization of Brouwer's fixed-point theorem.[8][43][75]Following von Neumann's program, Kenneth Arrow and Grard Debreu formulated abstract models of economic equilibria using convex sets and fixedpoint theory. In introducing the Arrow-Debreu model in 1954, they proved the existence (but not the uniqueness) of an equilibrium and also proved that every Walras equilibrium

isPareto efficient; in general, equilibria need not be unique.[76] In their models, the ("primal") vector space represented quantitites while the "dual" vector spacerepresented prices.[77] In Russia, the mathematician Leonid Kantorovich developed economic models in partially ordered vector spaces, that emphasized the duality between quantities and prices.[78] Oppressed by communism, Kantorovich renamed prices as "objectively determined valuations" which were abbreviated in Russian as "o. o. o.", alluding to the difficulty of discussing prices in the Soviet Union.[77][79][80] Even in finite dimensions, the concepts of functional analysis have illuminated economic theory, particularly in clarifying the role of prices as normal vectors to ahyperplane supporting a convex set, representing production or consumption possibilities. However, problems of describing optimization over time or under uncertainty require the use of infinitedimensional function spaces, because agents are chosing among functions or stochastic processes.[77][81][82][83] [edit]Differential

decline and rise

See also: Global analysis, Baire category, and Sard's lemma John von Neumann's work on functional analysis and topology in broke new ground in mathematics and economic theory.[43][84] It also left advanced mathematical economics with fewer applications of differential calculus. In particular, general equilibrium theorists used general topology, convex geometry, and optimization theory more than differential calculus, because the approach of differential calculus had failed to establish the existence of an equilibrium. However, the decline of differential calculus should not be exaggerated, because differential calculus has always been used in graduate training and in applications. Moreover, differential calculus has returned to the highest levels of mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory (GET), as practiced by the "GET-set" (the humorous designation due to Jacques H. Drze). In the 1960s and 1970s, however, Grard Debreu and Stephen Smale led a revival of the use of differential calculus in mathematical economics. In particular, they were able to prove the existence of a general equilibrium, where earlier writers had failed, because of their novel mathematics: Baire category from general topology and Sard's lemma from differential topology. Other economists asssociated with the use of differential analysis include Egbert Dierker, Andreu Mas-Colell, and Yves Balasko. [85][86] These advances have changed the traditional narrative of the history of mathematical economics, following von Neumann, which celebrated the abandonment of differential calculus. [edit]Game

theory

Main article: Game Theory See also: Cooperative game, Noncooperative game, John von Neumann, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, and John Forbes Nash, Jr.

John von Neumann, working with Oskar Morgenstern on the theory of games, broke new mathematical ground in 1944 by extending functional analytic methods related to convex sets and topological fixed-point theory to economic analysis.[8][87] Their work thereby avoided the traditional differential calculus, for which themaximum operator did not apply to non-differentiable functions. Continuing von Neumann's work in cooperative game theory, game theorists Lloyd S. Shapley,Martin Shubik, Herv Moulin, Nimrod Megiddo, Bezalel Peleg influenced economic research in politics and economics. For example, research on the fair prices in cooperative games and fair values for voting games led to changed rules for voting in legislatures and for accounting for the costs in publicworks projects. For example, cooperative game theory was used in designing the water distribution system of Southern Sweden and for setting rates for dedicated telephone lines in the USA. Earlier neoclassical theory had bounded only the range of bargaining outcomes and in special cases, for example bilateral monopoly or along the contract curve of the Edgeworth box.[88] Von Neumann and Morgenstern's results were similarly weak. Following von Neumann's program, however, John Nash used fixedpoint theory to prove conditions under which the bargaining problem and noncooperative games can generate a unique equilibrium solution.[89] Noncooperative game theory has been adopted as a fundamental aspect of experimental economics, [90] behavioral economics,[91] information economics,[92] industrial organization, [93] and political economy.[94] It has also given rise to the subject of mechanism design (sometimes called reverse game theory), which has private and publicpolicyapplications as to ways of improving economic efficiency through incentives for information sharing.[95] In 1994, Nash, John Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences their work on noncooperative games. Harsanyi and Selten were awarded for their work on repeated games. Later work extended their results to computational methods of modeling.[96] [edit]Agent-based

computational economics

Agent-based computational economics (ACE) as a named field is relatively recent, dating from about the 1990s as to published work. It studies economic processes, including whole economies, as dynamic systems of interacting agents over time. As such, it falls in the paradigm of complex adaptive systems.[97] In corresponding agent-based models, agents are not real people but "computational objects modeled as interacting according to rules" ... "whose micro-level interactions create emergent patterns" in space and time.[98] The rules are formulated to predict behavior and social interactions based on incentives and information. The theoretical assumption of mathematical optimization by agents markets is replaced by the less restrictive postulate of agents with boundedrationality adapting to market forces.[99] ACE models apply numerical methods of analysis to computer-based simulations of complex dynamic problems for which more conventional methods, such as theorem

formulation, may not find ready use.[100] Starting from specified initial conditions, the computational economic system is modeled as evolving over time as its constituent agents repeatedly interact with each other. In these respects, ACE has been characterized as a bottom-up culture-dish approach to the study of the economy. [101] In contrast to other standard modeling methods, ACE events are driven solely by initial conditions, whether or not equilibria exist or are computationally tractable. ACE modeling, however, includes agent adaptation, autonomy, and learning.[102] It has a similarity to, and overlap with, game theory as an agent-based method for modeling social interactions.[96] Other dimensions of the approach include such standard economic subjects as competition andcollaboration,[103] market structure and industrial organization,[104] transaction costs,[105] welfare economics[106] and mechanism design,[107] information and uncertainty, [108] and macroeconomics.[109][110] The method is said to benefit from continuing improvements in modeling techniques of computer science and increased computer capabilities. Issues include those common to experimental economics in general[111] and by comparison[112] and to development of a common framework for empirical validation and resolving open questions in agent-based modeling.[113] The ultimate scientific objective of the method has been described as "test[ing] theoretical findings against real-world data in ways that permit empirically supported theories to cumulate over time, with each researchers work building appropriately on the work that has gone before."[114] [edit]Mathematicization

of economics

The surface of the Volatility smile is a 3-D surface whereby the current market implied volatility (Z-axis) for all options on the underlier is plotted against strike price and time to maturity (X & Y-axes).[115]

Over the course of the 20th century, articles in "core journals"[116] in economics have been almost exclusively written by economists in academia. As a result, much of the material transmitted in those journals relates to economic theory, and "economic

theory itself has been continuously more abstract and mathematical."[117] A subjective assessment of mathematical techniques[118] employed in these core journals showed a decrease in articles that use neither geometric representations nor mathematical notation from 95% in 1892 to 5.3% in 1990.[119] A 2007 survey of ten of the top economic journals finds that only 5.8% of the articles published in 2003 and 2004 both lacked statistical analysis of data and lacked displayed mathematical expressions that were indexed with numbers at the margin of the page.[120] [edit]Econometrics Main article: Econometrics Between the world wars, advances in mathematical statistics and a cadre of mathematically trained economists led to econometrics, which was the name proposed for the discipline of advancing economics by using mathematics and statistics. Within economics, "econometrics" has often been used for statistical methods in economics, rather than mathematical economics. Statistical econometrics features the application of linear regression and time series analysis to economic data. Ragnar Frisch coined the word "econometrics" and helped to found both the Econometric Society in 1930 and the journal Econometrica in 1933.[121][122] A student of Frisch's, Trygve Haavelmo published The Probability Approach in Econometrics in 1944, where he asserted that precise statistical analysis could be used as a tool to validate mathematical theories about economic actors with data from complex sources.[123] This linking of statistical analysis of systems to economic theory was also promulgated by the Cowles Commission (now the Cowles Foundation) throughout the 1930s and 1940s.[124] [edit]Earlier

work in econometrics

The roots of modern econometrics can be traced to the American economist Henry L. Moore. Moore studied agricultural productivity and attempted to fit changing values of productivity for plots of corn and other crops to a curve using different values of elasticity. Moore made several errors in his work, some from his choice of models and some from limitations in his use of mathematics. The accuracy of Moore's models also was limited by the poor data for national accounts in the United States at the time. While his first models of production were static, in 1925 he published a dynamic "moving equilibrium" model designed to explain business cyclesthis periodic variation from overcorrection in supply and demand curves is now known as the cobweb model. A more formal derivation of this model was made later by Nicholas Kaldor, who is largely credited for its exposition.[125] [edit]Application

The IS/LM model is a Keynesian macroeconomic model designed to make predictions about the intersection of "real" economic activity (e.g. spending, income, savings rates) and decisions made in the financial markets (Money supply andLiquidity preference). The model is no longer widely taught at the graduate level but is common in undergraduate macroeconomics courses.[126]

Much of classical economics can be presented in simple geometric terms or elementary mathematical notation. Mathematical economics, however, conventionally makes use of calculus and matrix algebra in economic analysis in order to make powerful claims that would be more difficult without such mathematical tools. These tools are prerequisites for formal study, not only in mathematical economics but in contemporary economic theory in general. Economic problems often involve so many variables thatmathematics is the only practical way of attacking and solving them. Alfred Marshall argued that every economic problem which can be quantified, analytically expressed and solved, should be treated by means of mathematical work.[127] Economics has become increasingly dependent upon mathematical methods and the mathematical tools it employs have become more sophisticated. As a result, mathematics has become considerably more important to professionals in economics and finance. Graduate programs in both economics and finance require strong undergraduate preparation in mathematics for admission and, for this reason, attract an increasingly high number of mathematicians. Applied mathematicians apply mathematical principles to practical problems, such as economic analysis and other economics-related issues, and many economic problems are often defined as integrated into the scope of applied mathematics.[17] This integration results from the formulation of economic problems as stylized models with clear assumptions and falsifiable predictions. This modeling may be

informal or prosaic, as it was in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, or it may be formal, rigorous and mathematical. Broadly speaking, formal economic models may be classified as stochastic or deterministic and as discrete or continuous. At a practical level, quantitative modeling is applied to many areas of economics and several methodologies have evolved more or less independently of each other.[128] Stochastic models are formulated using stochastic processes. They model economically observable values over time. Most of econometrics is based on statistics to formulate and test hypotheses about these processes or estimate parameters for them. Between the World Wars, Herman Wold developed a representation of stationary stochastic processes in terms of autoregressive models and a determinist trend. Wold and Jan Tinbergen applied time-series analysis to economic data. Contemporary research on time series statistics consider additional formulations of stationary processes, such as autoregressive moving average models. More general models includeautoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) models and generalized ARCH (GARCH) models. Non-stochastic mathematical models may be purely qualitative (for example, models involved in some aspect of social choice theory) or quantitative (involving rationalization of financial variables, for example with hyperbolic coordinates, and/or specific forms of functional relationships between variables). In some cases economic predictions of a model merely assert the direction of movement of economic variables, and so the functional relationships are used only in a qualitative sense: for example, if the price of an item increases, then the demand for that item will decrease. For such models, economists often use two-dimensional graphs instead of functions. Qualitative models are occasionally used. One example is qualitative scenario planning in which possible future events are played out. Another example is non-numerical decision tree analysis. Qualitative models often suffer from lack of precision. [edit]Criticisms [edit]Adequacy

and defences

of mathematics for qualitative and complicated economics

Friedrich Hayek contended that the use of formal techniques projects a scientific exactness that does not appropriately account for informational limitations faced by real economic agents. [129] In an interview, the economic historian Robert Heilbroner stated:[130]

I guess the scientific approach began to penetrate and soon dominate the profession in the past twenty to thirty years. This came about in part because of the "invention" of mathematical analysis of various kinds and, indeed, considerable improvements in it. This is the age in which we have not only more data but more sophisticated use of data. So there is a strong feeling that this is a data-laden science and a data-laden undertaking, which, by virtue of the sheer numerics, the sheer equations, and the sheer look of a journal page, bears a certain resemblance to science . . . That one central activity looks scientific. I understand that. I think that is genuine. It approaches being a universal law. But resembling a science is different from being a science. Heilbroner stated that "some/much of economics is not naturally quantitative and therefore does not lend itself to mathematical exposition."[131] [edit]Testing

predictions of mathematical economics

Philosopher Karl Popper discussed the scientific standing of economics in the 1940s and 1950s. He argued that mathematical economics suffered from being tautological. In other words, insofar that economics became a mathematical theory, mathematical economics ceased to rely on empirical refutation but rather relied on mathematical proofs and disproof.[132] According to Popper, falsifiable assumptions can be tested by experiment and observation while unfalsifiable assumptions can be explored mathematically for their consequences and for their consistency with other assumptions.[133] Sharing Popper's concerns about assumptions in economics generally, and not just mathematical economics, Milton Friedman declared that "all assumptions are unrealistic". Friedman proposed judging economic models by their predictive performance rather than by the match between their assumptions and reality.[134] [edit]Mathematical

economics as a form of pure mathematics

See also: Pure mathematics, Applied mathematics, and Engineering Considering mathematical economics, J.M. Keynes wrote in The General Theory:
[135]

It is a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical methods of formalising a system of economic analysis ... that they expressly assume strict independence between the factors involved and lose their cogency and authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in ordinary discourse, where we are not blindly manipulating and know all the time what we are doing and what the words mean, we can keep at the back of our heads the necessary reserves and qualifications and the adjustments which we shall have to make later on, in a way in which we cannot keep complicated partial differentials at the back of several pages of algebra which assume they all vanish. Too large a proportion of recent mathematical economics are merely concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and

interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols. [edit]Defense

of mathematical economics

In response to these criticisms, Paul Samuelson argued that mathematics is a language, repeating a thesis of Josiah Willard Gibbs. In economics, the language of mathematics is sometimes necessary for representing substantive problems. Moreover, mathematical economics has led to conceptual advances in economics. [136] In particular, Samuelson gave the example of microeconomics, writing that "few people are ingenious enough to grasp [its] more complex parts...without resorting to the language of mathematics, while most ordinary individuals can do so fairly easily with the aid of mathematics."[137] Some economists state that mathematical economics deserves support just like other forms of mathematics, particularly its neighbors in mathematical optimization and mathematical statistics and increasingly in theoretical computer science. Mathematical economics and other mathematical sciences have a history in which theoretical advances have regularly contributed to the reform of the more applied branches of economics. In particular, following the program of John von Neumann, game theory now provides the foundations for describing much of applied economics, from statistical decision theory (as "games against nature") and econometrics to general equilibrium theory and industrial organization. In the last decade, with the rise of the internet, mathematical economicists and optimization experts and computer scientists have worked on problems of pricing for on-line services --- their contributions using mathematics from cooperative game theory, nondifferentiable optimization, and combinatorial games. Robert M. Solow concluded that mathematical economics was the core "infrastructure" of contemporary economics: Economics is no longer a fit conversation piece for ladies and gentlemen. It has become a technical subject. Like any technical subject it attracts some people who are more interested in the technique than the subject. That is too bad, but it may be inevitable. In any case, do not kid yourself: the technical core of economics is indispensable infrastructure for the political economy. That is why, if you consult [a reference in contemporary economics] looking for enlightenment about the world today, you will be led to technical economics, or history, or nothing at all.[138] [edit]Mathematical

economists

Prominent mathematical economists include, but are not limited to, the following (by century of birth). [edit]19th

century
Francis Ysidro Irving

Enrico Barone

William Stanley

Edgeworth Antoine Augustin Cournot [edit]20th

Fisher

Jevons

century
Nicholas Georgescu Andreu Mas Roegen Roger Guesnerie Frank Hahn John C. Harsanyi John R. Hicks Werner Hildenbrand Harold Hotelling Leonid Hurwicz Leonid Kantorovich Tjalling Koopmans David M. Kreps Harold W. Kuhn Edmond Malinvaud Colell Eric Maskin Nimrod

Charalambos D.

Leonard J. S

Aliprantis R. G. D. Allen Maurice Allais Kenneth J. Arrow Robert J. Aumann Yves Balasko David Blackwell Lawrence E. Blume Graciela Chichilnisky George B. Dantzig Grard Debreu Jacques H. Drze David Gale

Herbert Scar

Reinhard Sel

Amartya Sen

Megiddo James Mirrlees Roger Myerson John Forbes

Lloyd S. Sha

Stephen Sma

Robert Solow Hugo F.

Nash, Jr. John von

Sonnenschein

Albert W. Tu

Neumann Edward C.

Hirofumi Uz

Robert B. W

Prescott Roy Radner Frank Ramsey Donald John

Hermann Wo Nicholas C.

Yannelis

Roberts [edit]Notes Paul Samuelson Thomas Sargent

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Why we use math in economics

It's the day after Labor Day, which means it is the first day of orientation for incoming MPAID students. Which also means that I have to give them a talk about the program and how it all fits together. In explaining our extensive and demanding curriculum, I emphasize that development is too important to be left to mushy thinking. But having gone through an intense math camp for the last couple of weeks, taught by the inimitable Deb HughesHallett, the students are a bit groggy at this point. Many wonder why they need to know about quasi-concavity and all that in order to be good at what they came here for--which is to improve the lives of the poor. So I tell them a story about Sir W. Arthur Lewis. When I was a master's student myself at Princeton, I once attended a lecture that he gave on real wages, the commodity terms of trade, and North-South income differentials. The talk had no math in it. One of the younger faculty members of the economics department was sitting in the front row, and I could see him scratching his head in confusion throughout the talk. A few minutes after Sir Arthur was done, this young professor jumped up in excitement and went up to the board. "Now I get it!" he exclaimed and began to scribble some equations on the board. "This is the equation which relates to what you said in the first part of your talk, and this one expresses the other, and here is a third... and now finally we have three independent equations that determines your three endogenous variables..." Sir Arthur kept on his bemused smile as his lecture was explained to him in mathematical terms. The moral of the story is that if you are smart enough to be a Nobel-prize winning economist maybe you can do without the math, but the rest of us mere mortals cannot. We need the math to make sure that we think straight-to ensure that our conclusions follow from our premises and that we haven't left loose ends hanging in our argument. In other words, we use math not because we are smart, but because we are not smart enough.

We are just smart enough to recognize that we are not smart enough. And this recognition, I tell our students, will set them apart from a lot of people out there with very strong opinions about what to do about poverty and underdevelopment.
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Why Aspiring Economists Need Math

A student emails me a question about the use of math in economics: Dear Dr. Mankiw, Hi, I am an undergraduate student studying economics in Michigan. I have recently become a big fan of your blog. I found your "Advice for Students" very helpful to professional economist-wannabes like me, and especially, those considering graduate study in economics. Your suggestion on math preparation for undergrads landed me on one simple question: "Do economists really use all that math?" I was wondering if you could tell me how closely math and the works of professional economists at international organizations, such as World Bank and IMF, are related? I look forward to your answer. Thank you in advance!

Best Regards, [name withheld] A student who wants to pursue a career in policy-related economics is advised to go to the best graduate school he or she can get into. The best graduate schools will expect to see a lot of math on your undergraduate transcript, so you need to take it. But will you use a lot of differential equations and real analysis once you land that dream job in a policy organization? No, you won't. That raises the question: Why do we academics want students that have taken a lot of math? There are several reasons: 1. Every economist needs to have a solid foundation in the basics of economic theory and econometrics, even if you are not going to be either a theorist or an econometrician. You cannot get this solid foundation without understanding the language of mathematics that these fields use. 2. Occasionally, you will need math in your job. In particular, even as a policy economist, you need to be able to read the academic literature to figure out what research ideas have policy relevance. That literature uses a lot of math, so you will need to be equipped with mathematical tools to read it intelligently. 3. Math is good training for the mind. It makes you a more rigorous thinker. 4. Your math courses are one long IQ test. We use math courses to figure out who is really smart. 5. Economics graduate programs are more oriented to training students for academic research than for policy jobs. Although many econ PhDs go on to policy work, all of us teaching in graduate programs are, by definition, academics. Some academics take a few years off to experience the policy world, as I did not long ago, but many academics have no idea what that world is like. When we enter the classroom, we teach what we know. (I am not claiming this is optimal, just reality.) So math plays a larger role in graduate classes than it does in many jobs that PhD economists hold.

Is it possible that admissions committees for econ PhD programs are excessively fond of mathematics on student transcripts? Perhaps. That is something I might argue with my colleagues about if I were ever put on the admissions committee. But a student cannot change that. The fact is, if you are thinking about a PhD program in economics, you are advised to take math courses until it hurts.
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GREG MANKIW UNITED STATES

I am a professor of economics at Harvard University, where I teach introductory economics (ec 10) among other courses. I use this blog to keep in touch with my current and former students. Teachers and students at other schools, as well as others interested in economic issues, are welcome to use this resource.

September 11, 2009, 4:48 AM

Mathematics and economics

Ive been getting some comments from people who think my magazine piecewas an attack on the use of mathematics in economics. It wasnt. Math in economics can be extremely useful. I should know! Most of my own work over the years has relied on sometimes finicky math I spent quite a few years of my life doing tricks with constantelasticity-of-substitution utility functions. And the mathematical grinding served an essential function that of clarifying thought. In the economic geography stuff, for example, I started with some vague ideas; it wasnt until Id managed to write down full models that the ideas came

clear. After the math I was able to express most of those ideas in plain English, but it really took the math to get there, and you still cant quite get it all without the equations. What I objected to in the mag article was the tendency to identify good math with good work. CAPM is a beautiful model; that doesnt mean its right. The math of real business cycle models is much more elegant than that of New Keynesian models, let alone the kind of models that make room for crises like the one were in; that makes RBC models seductive, but it doesnt make them any less silly. And conversely, you can have great work in economics with little or no math. I cant pull up papers now, but as I recall, Akerlofs market for lemons had virtually no explicit math in its main exposition; yet it was transformative in its insight. So by all means lets have math in economics but as our servant, not our master.

Economics: Applying Math to Real-World Problems by Susan Athey When I was in high school, thinking about my future, I had many plans: I thought I might be a psychiatrist, an entrepreneur, or maybe a computer scientist--but I never considered a career in economics. Sure, I read The Washington Post every morning, and I could repeat criticisms I had read of Ronald Reagan's "supply-side economics." But I couldn't have told you much about economics, other than that it had something to do with interest rates and recessions. The Price of Televisions When I entered college, I jumped right into computer science classes, taking an introductory economics course only because I thought I might someday work in a computer business. In that economics class, I learned the textbook definition of economics: the study of how "scarce

resources"--land, energy, food, computers, or protection by military defense systems--get allocated to companies and consumers. One way these resources can be allocated is through markets that operate without too much day-to-day government interference. In such markets, firms are free to set their own prices, and consumers to choose what to buy. So how do we figure out the price people will pay at the store for something like a television? The most basic model of a market needs two functions: supply and demand. We generally assume that demand decreases as price increases: the higher the price, the fewer people want TVs. Supply, on the other hand, increases as price increases: the higher the price, the more TVs companies are willing to sell. With these two functions, we can find the market equilibrium price, at which supply equals demand: the number of televisions companies are willing to sell at a given price equals the number of people who want televisions at that price. Applying the Models In class, we learned how to use our models of markets to answer questions about government policy, such as what happens when the government raises the minimum wage. By requiring employers to pay wages higher than they otherwise would, the government could upset the market equilibrium: the supply of workers might become greater than the demand for workers. Of course, to know how many people would lose their jobs, we would need to know the actual numbers for the supply and demand functions. Some economists spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what real-world supply and demand curves look like. But since economists don't usually make use of highly controlled laboratories as biologists and chemists do, they have to use a lot of ingenuity and statistical analysis to draw conclusions from the data they gather. Partly for this reason, economists don't always agree with each other as in the debate about raising the minimum wage. Some economists' research about supply and demand suggests that a lot of people would lose their jobs if the minimum wage were raised. Other economists have analyzed specific examples in the past in which the minimum wage did go up but the number of jobs stayed about the same. This second group of economists won the most recent debate in Washington: they convinced the president to increase the minimum wage, and Congress voted the increase into law.

The minimum wage question demonstrates the two main kinds of problems economists solve: empirical problems and theoretical problems. Empiricists spend most of their time working with data; they look for exact numbers that best match up with reality, like the economists who try to figure out the effect of raising the minimum wage. Theorists, on the other hand, write abstract mathematical models that capture only the most important parts of a real problem. An elegant theoretical model helps you understand the main ideas, as in the example of market equilibrium. Although I was excited about the idea of using math to solve theoretical economic problems, the supply-and-demand models we studied in the introductory course seemed too simple. For example, the models did not allow for the possibility that firms might be able to charge different prices to different people, as when the local baseball stadium gives student discounts or when airlines charge less for the same flight when a Saturday night stayover is included. By using more complicated pricing structures, it seems that companies can charge low prices to people who don't want to spend a lot of money, but at the same time charge high prices to people who are willing to pay more. To Fink or Not to Fink? I might have given up on economics and stuck with computer science had I not taken a seminar on game theory and industrial organization, in which I learned that economic models could be much more powerful than I had previously imagined. These models could explain companies' strategic behaviors by formally analyzing the "games" that companies play. Our education about game theory began with the famous "Prisoner's Dilemma," in which two criminals are brought into separate rooms for interrogation. The criminals have two choices: "fink" and implicate the other criminal, or stay silent. If neither finks, both will go to jail for one year. If one prisoner finks and the other is silent, the one who finks goes free and the other goes to jail for fifteen years. If both fink, both go to jail for ten years. In game theory, you analyze games like this using the principle of Nash equilibrium, which is a set of strategies, one for each player. For the set to be a Nash equilibrium, each player's strategy must be a "best response" to the strategies of the other players. That is, each player makes the following calculation: Suppose I knew for sure that my opponents were going

to follow a certain strategy. Then, is my strategy the best choice I can make in response? In the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Nash equilibrium is for both players to fink. Why? Suppose you thought your opponent was going to stay silent. If you fink on him, you go free, while if you stay silent, you go to jail for a year. So your best response to an opponent staying silent is to fink. Now suppose that you thought your opponent was going to fink. If you remain silent, you go to jail for fifteen years, but if you fink, your sentence is only ten years. So your best response to an opponent finking is to fink. Thus, the Nash equilibrium is for both players to fink. Game Theory in Real Life The Prisoner's Dilemma has useful economic applications, such as in a trade war. Introductory economics teaches you that the best outcome for two countries results from free trade, with no tariffs. When both the U.S. and Japan have tariffs, cars and computers cost consumers more in both countries, fewer goods are produced, and both countries are worse off than with free trade. But whether or not the Japanese decide to use tariffs, the short-term best response of the U.S. might be to place tariffs on some goods. The government profits from the taxes collected on each imported good, and American companies capture a larger market share when foreign imports are taxed. On the other hand, all consumers pay higher prices, and some even get priced out of the market. But if the U.S. is an important customer for Japanese firms, the Japanese might lower their prices in order to avoid losing all of their U.S. customers. If the Japanese lower their prices enough, the U.S. might do better by using a tariff. The "dilemma" is that Japan will make the same calculation, leaving both countries in the fink-fink Nash equilibrium of high tariffs all around. We also learned in that class how to apply the tools of game theory to a wide variety of complicated problems, such as why gas stations tend to locate in clusters instead of isolating themselves; why beer companies sell almost the same product under different labels, a premium brand and a generic; and why companies might make more money by bundling several products together (a current example is Microsoft's attempt to bundle Internet Explorer with its operating system Windows). For each of these problems, we could write down a mathematical model and actually prove our answers. I never looked at a supermarket the same way again.

Making a Career of Applying Math When I decided that I wanted to become an economics professor, I arranged to spend a summer doing research with an economist to gain experience. I was surprised when, after I asked him what classes I should take, he advised me to major in math! He told me that most undergraduate econ classes weren't as mathematically sophisticated as those I would soon encounter in graduate economics programs, and that lots of math is required to get into the top schools. So when I returned to math classes, it was with a new respect for math. I was no longer just plodding through problem after problem--I was learning tools that I would need to do my own research. In graduate school, I became interested in the mathematical tools used to solve theoretical models. Before I knew it, I was discovering new ways to analyze models. I'll never forget my excitement and disbelief when I proved my first theorem. When my classmates and I finished our Ph.D.s, we went looking for jobs. Some went to work for the government, while others went into research positions on Wall Street and in management consulting firms. Still others went to work for consulting firms that specialize entirely in legal cases involving economics. And many of us were hired by universities as professors. Economics professors aren't always in their offices or the classroom, though. Companies and government officials frequently seek the advice of economists. Some of my colleagues serve on commissions to analyze particular policy problems, such as social security. Others go to Washington, D.C., for a few years to serve in presidential administrations; they might serve, for example, in the cabinet or on the Council of Economic Advisors. When they return to the university, their lectures are filled with real-world examples, and they have new ideas for research topics. Careers in academia can take many directions, as professors spend some years focusing mainly on research, others on teaching, and others on shaping public policy. But no matter how they spend their time, it's a great way to make a career of applying mathematics to real-world problems. Photo caption: Susan Athey is an assistant professor of economics at MIT, where she holds the Castle Krob Career Development Chair.