Optimal Firm Behaviour in the Context of Technological Progress and a Business Cycle

Hilten, Onno van

ISBN 10: 3540535632 / ISBN 13: 9783540535638

Published by Springer 1991-02, 1991

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-IUK-9783540535638

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Optimal Firm Behaviour in the Context of Technological Progress and a Business Cycle
• Publisher: Springer 1991-02
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3540535632
• ISBN 13: 9783540535638
• Binding: PF
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This thesis is a theoretical study of the optimal dynamic policies of a, to some extent, slowly adjusting firm that faces an exogeneously given technological progress and an exogeneously given business cycle. It belongs to the area of mathematical economics. It is intended to appeal to mathematical economists in the first place, economists in the second place and mathematicians in the third place. It entails an attempt to stretch the limits of the application of deterministic dynamic optimisation to economics, in particular to firm behaviour. A well-known· Dutch economist (and trained mathematician) recently stated in 1 a local university newspaper that mathematical economists give economics a bad reputation, since they formulate their problems from a mathematical point of view and they are only interested in technical, mathematical problems. At the same time, however, "profound as economists may be, when it comes to extending or modifying the existing theory to make it applicable to a certain economic problem, an understanding of optimal control theory (which is the mathematical theory used in this thesis, ovh) based solely on heuristic arguments will often turn out to be inadequate" (SydS