================= HES POSTING ======================= 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 ______________________________________________________ Department of Economics 426 Decio Hall University of Notre Dame (219)631-6979 (O) Notre Dame, IN 46556 (219)631-8809 (F) http://www.nd.edu:80/~esent mailto:[log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________ ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]