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| This course develops techniques to model dynamic processes and dynamic decisions, in both deterministic and stochastic environments, and in both continuous and discrete time. The focus is on the practical aspects of using these techniques for applied theoretical research. The methodological toolkit will be particularly valuable to students of entrepreneurship and technological change. Applications culled from classic and recent literature reveal how these techniques are employed in theoretical research and how they help organize empirical research. |
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| Tuesday and Thursday, 5:00-6:20pm. |
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| There will be a bunch of homeworks, a mid-term and a final. Each will account for about 1/3 of the grade. |
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| This course is concerned with analytical, not numerical, techniques. However, dynamic models often involve messy differentiation or, more inconveniently, messy integration. There are no cigars given these days for spending an hour integrating a function when computer programs exist to do it for you in a second. CMU has site licenses for Mathematica and Maple, which you can obtain here. I prefer to use a wonderful little program called Derive. It predates Mathematica and Maple, and is excellent for quick calculus. The program does not have a lot of the features of Mathematica and Maple. But that is its beauty -- it is quick and cheap ($99.00 for educational users), and accurate. It will solve your calculus problems, never make a mistake, and produce nice graphs of the functions. |
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email:pt@andrew.cmu.edu Office: 219B Porter Hall Tel: (412) 268-3009 Fax: (412) 268-6938 Office Hours: any time, more or less |