Study week on the econometric approach to development planning

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1824422792

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-217476

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Study week on the econometric approach to development planning

Place of publication:: Amsterdam [u.a.]

Publisher:: North-Holland Publ. Co. [u.a.]

Year of publication:: 1965

Scope:: XLVII, 1259 S.; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The analysis of economic systems / Richard Stone, Cambridge University - Cambridge - Great Britain

Collection:: Economics Books

112 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28 discussing can be summarised briefly under the term « disaggregat- lon ». It certainly is not my belief that the way to get better models and a more realistic representation of the economy is to start with a general model of the kind I described and then simply make it larger and larger and larger. The reason why this is not a good idea is, firstly, that it is impossible to get, in any group, sufficient infor- mation to build so large a model and, secondly, that it is quite unnecessary to do so. If you are interested in the operation of the chemical industry, even if you are only interested in a certain group of activities brought together in a single firm, you can set up a model, as large or larger than mine, to analyse the operations of that ndustry or firm. But it will be quite impossible for any single group of scientists to integrate into their own work models of this degree of detail. But why should they; if the industries concerned are willing to do the job themselves and are obviously very much setter at doing it? And this goes not only for the industrial side of ‘he model. The same can be said about many of the activities of government. It is too much to expect that a group of economists who have the problem of a general model on their hands will also be able to build models of, say, the health service, the educational system and the defence system. The right way, I think, to get this sort of disaggregation is to have a series of sub-models (which, however, must be linked to the main one), to decentralize the building of these models and to put this work in the hands of people with the necessary specialized knowledge. finally, I should like to say something about another recurring :heme in this morning’s discussion: the question of iteration. It seems :o me that this is the fundamental principle on which all learning and all model-building is based. One has to start somewhere. One knows perfectly well that one’s prototype model will not be a very perfect tool, but the really important thing is that one should set it up, see how the parts of the system interact, and check how the relationships of the model work out in practice. We are bound to start with relatively simple ideas, we are bound to start with relati- vely inaccurate facts. We can try to find out how far the facts 1" Stone - pag. 110

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