{"id":32,"date":"2008-05-13T13:18:55","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T13:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=32"},"modified":"2008-05-13T13:18:55","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T13:18:55","slug":"macro-economic-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/macro-economic-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Macro-economic models"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New Zealand-born economist, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Phillips_%28economist%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">Bill Phillips<\/span><\/a>, is best known for identifying an empirical relationship between a country\u2019s inflation rate and its unemployment, the so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phillips_curve\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">Phillips curve<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 However, before becoming an economist, Phillips had been an engineer, and in 1949 he built one of the first models of a national\u00a0economy, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/MONIAC_Computer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">MONIAC<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 MONIAC used flows of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/2008\/may\/08\/bankofenglandgovernor.economics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">coloured water\u00a0<\/span><\/a>to represent money flows through an\u00a0economy, and perhaps explains (or is a reflection of)\u00a0traditional\u00a0economics\u2019 obsession\u00a0with distinguishing stocks from flows.<br \/>\nIn the 1970s, the Australian cartoonist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bruce_Petty\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">Bruce Petty<\/span><\/a> also built a physical model of\u00a0a national economy, but this time with seats for several human operators, representing variously The Government, The Unions, Big Business, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead of the hydraulic flows used by Phillips, Petty\u2019s model used mechanical levers and pulleys, which impacted in convoluted ways on the machine and on the other operators.\u00a0\u00a0 This model\u00a0looked something built by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heath_Robinson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">Heath Robinson<\/span><\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rube_Goldberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #704600;\">Rube Goldberg<\/span><\/a>, and was immense fun to watch it at work.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve not yet\u00a0been able to find a video of Petty\u2019s model at work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Zealand-born economist, Bill Phillips, is best known for identifying an empirical relationship between a country\u2019s inflation rate and its unemployment, the so-called Phillips curve.\u00a0 However, before becoming an economist, Phillips had been an engineer, and in 1949 he built one of the first models of a national\u00a0economy, the MONIAC.\u00a0 MONIAC used flows of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decision-theory","category-economics","category-forecasting","p1","y2008","m05","d13","h13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}