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Egwald Economics: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and International Economics
Egwald's popular web pages are provided without cost to users. Microeconomics Theory, Testing, and Applications In his introduction to Value and Capital, John Hicks compared writers of texts on the Principles of Economics to classical poets, urging them on with the quote, "What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed." My aim on these web pages is to develop key models of economics that lend themselves to interactive investigation by internet users. Wherever possible, I permit the user/reader to perform comparative statics exercises with the models, to investigate how the models' results vary when their parameters are adjusted. The models of section A. are microeconomics models that I found useful while working as a government economist. The models of section B. are based on the macroeconomics aggregates of the Canadian economy. A. Microeconomics: Economists attack and/or defend large corporations. Adam Smith believed a monopoly (oligopoly) firm charges higher prices for products than would obtain if the products were produced by a large number of smaller competitive firms. Textbooks on microeconomics teach that there is a range of competition among firms, from perfectly competitive to monopolistically competitive to differentiated oligopoly to pure oligopoly to monopoly. Economists differ sharply as to the effects of monopoly power. Differences in opinion are even sharper about the role of government (public firms) enterprises in modern economies. Despite the worldwide collapse of communism and concomitant privatization, government enterprises continue to play a role in many economies. 1. Oligopoly / Government Firm / Mixed Oligopoly Model.
My programs let you model an industry that is: Each seller in an imperfectly competitive market faces a negatively sloped demand curve for its product, permitting it some control of the price of its product. In a differentiated oligopoly, a few firms produce products different enough for each firm to have its own downward sloping demand curve. The many firms in a monopolistically competitive industry produce differentiated yet similar products. New firms can easily enter the industry. A monopolistically competitive firm's own demand curve is highly elastic, permitting it to vary its price within a narrow range of prices. The other firms' products are either very close substitutes or, a large number of other firms' products are substitutes (not necessarily very close substitutes). These web pages explain the most important production functions used in economics: the Cobb-Douglas production function, the CES production function, the Generalized CES production function, the Translog production function, and the Generalized Leontief (Diewert) production function. You can also estimate the parameters of the Translog and the Generalized Leontief (Diewert) production functions online. 5. Cost Functions. These web pages explain the most important cost functions used in economics: the Cobb-Douglas cost function, the Normalized Quadratic cost function, the Translog cost function, the Generalized Leontief (Diewert) cost function, the Generalized CES-Translog cost function, and the Generalized CES-Diewert cost function. The web pages demonstrate, numerically, the duality between production and cost functions, and permit you to estimate the parameters of the Translog and the Generalized Leontief (Diewert) cost functions online. 6. Duality of Production / Cost Functions. Obtain the Cobb-Douglas cost function from the Cobb-Douglas production function, and the CES cost function from the CES production function; and vice-versa. Investigate the Theory of Duality using the Implicit Function Theorem. B. Macroeconomics: Macroeconomics attempts to understand the behaviour of the whole economy by analyzing the determination and interaction of such broad economic aggregates as national income and product, consumers' expenditures and savings, producers' output of products and producers' investment in capital, government revenues (taxes) and expenditures, exports and imports, the level and composition (by age, sex, and region) of employment, and the quantity of money in circulation. Much of modern macroeconomics theory and its application in government policy is still based on the work of John Maynard Keynes. In the basic IS-LM model, the behaviour of the economic agents - consumers, producers (firms), and the government - is reconciled by the product and money markets. Focusing on the "demand side" of the economy, the IS-LM model is an important starting point in building a more complete macroeconomics model of the economy. 3. Basic IS-LM model with exports and imports. This web page extends the basic IS-LM model to include exports and imports. By adding the external sector, I model the open economy version of the Canadian economy. 4. Comparative Statics of the IS-LM model. This web page permits you to adjust the IS-LM model's parameters to see how the equilibrium macroeconomics variables and aggregates of the model change.
5. Aggregate Demand (AD) - Aggregate Supply (AS) model. 6. Comparative Statics of the AD-AS Model. This web page permits you to adjust the AD-AS (Aggregate Demand - Aggregate Supply) model's parameters to see how the equilibrium macroeconomics variables and aggregates of the model change. 7. Review of Disequilibrium in Markets: The Micro-Foundations.
My somewhat revised essay as a graduate student in economics that reviews recent research (1972) on disequilibrium in markets. I describe the constraints that confront the agents attempting to maximize their objective functions,
subject to a fixed vector of relative disequilibrium prices. As the agents buy and sell goods,
they must satisfy their transaction budget and goods transaction balance constraints. The amounts demanded and supplied by agents of each good subject to
these criteria is called the agents’ notional demand for or supply of that good.
8. Optimal Savings Under Risk and Uncertainty. My essay as a graduate student in economics in 1973 while taking a course in Economic Fluctuations and Growth. The context of the paper is the economic problem of optimal savings under risk and uncertainty. Consider a hypothetical economy with a planner who must decide in each time period what portion of economic output is to be consumed and what portion is to be retained as capital. The planner seeks to make these allocations so as to maximize the utility (in the sense of satisfaction) of consumption over some planning horizon. Because of uncertainties due to nature and errors of observation, the planner does not know how much output will be available in the next time period by way of production with a given amount of capital during the current time period. 9. Monetary Equilibrium and the Stockholm School. My essay as a graduate student in economics that analyzes the contributions of the Stockholm School of Economics to monetary theory, particularly the contributions to be found in Gunnar Myrdal’s book, Monetary Equilibrium, first published in 1933. C. International Economics 1. International Economics home page. 2. A Survey of Intermediate Products in International Trade. My essay as a graduate student in International Economics that surveys and analyzes Intermediate Products in International Trade Theories. D. Other Links: For the latest in statistics on the Canadian economy, go to the Statistics Canada homepage. Works Cited and Consulted
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