Models of Economic Dynamics

During the week of October 24-28, 1983, a group of mathematicians and eco- nomists met at the Institute for Mathematics and it Applications at the University of Minnesota. The workshop dealt with economic models in which time plays an essential role, and both the description of adjustment to a static equilibrium and the description of equilibrium paths were considered. From a mathematical point of view, discrete dynamical systems and the dynamics of ordi- nary and partial differential equations played a major role. The conference consisted of lectures by economists and by mathematicians which treated some of the principal ideas of economic dynamics. Donald Saari pro- vided some discrete dynamical systems background for a paper by Jean-Michel Grandmont on business cycles; the Grandmont paper was a major focus of the Workshop. Daniel Goroff, Jose Scheinkman, Christopher Sims. Neil Wallace. and Michael Woodford discussed the Grandmont paper after its presentation. The ideas of tatonnement were introduced by Leonid Hurwicz and extended by Andreu MasColell and H. Jerome Keisler. Four papers on economic dynamics follow (W. A. Brock, Truman Bewley. W. A. Brock and M. Rothschild and Yieh-Hei Wan). The remaining papers are devoted to issues of quantity and/or price adjustment (William Novshek and Hugo Sonnenschein. Phillipe Artzner. Carl Simon and Hugo Sonnenschein). equilibrium with a continuum of commodities (Larry Jones), and the adjustment of expectations (Lawrence Blume and James Jordan).