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Paul Wendt wrote:
>Thus economic efficiency is what economists study and engineering
>efficiency is what engineers study. But economists also say, in effect,
>"engineers make the mistake of studying engineering efficiency".
The irony is that during the (late) 20th century, engineering conceptions
of the world dominated economists' quest for a more scientific analysis of
economic dynamics. While economists claimed to be using rigorous
mathematics as a universal language, their techniques were in fact mostly
popularized by and borrowed from engineering.
Here's a quote from Preston J. Miller (1994: "The Rational Expectations
Revolution," Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. xiii):
"Before the [rational expectations] revolution, macroeconomic policymaking
was viewed as an engineering problem. Guiding the economy is similar to
guiding a rocket ship....A macroeconomic policymaker's goal was to keep
the economy on a full employment, noninflationary path, similar to an
engineer's goal of keeping a rocket ship on its course. The policymaker
had policy tools to control, such as tax rates or base money, similar to
an engineer's levers and dials. The policymaking problem was posed as
adjusting the tools based on new information about the economy's position
and the economic environment to best keep the economy on its full
employment noninflationary path. This was similar to the engineer's
problem of adjusting the levers and dials based on new information about
the rocket ship's position and external conditions to best keep the rocket
ship on its course."
In case you're interested, Nancy Wulwick has written about some of the
connections between economics and engineering in 1990: "The Mathematics of
Economic Growth," Working Paper No. 38, Jerome Levy Economics Institute,
Bard College and 1995: "The Hamiltonian Formalism and Optimal Growth
Theory," in Measurement, Quantification, and Economic Analysis, edited by
I.H. Rima, London: Routledge. I have a paper forthcoming on "Engineering
Dynamic Economics" in the 1997 HOPE supplement.
--Esther-Mirjam Sent
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