Computable Economics

In the field of economic analysis, computability in the formation of economic hypotheses is seen as the way forward. In this book, Professor Velupillai implements a theoretical research program along these lines. Choice theory, learning rational expectations equlibria, the persistence ofadaptive behaviour, arithmetical games, aspects of production theory, and economic dynamics are given recursion theoretic (i.e. computable) interpretations. These interpretations lead to new kinds of questions being posed by the economic theorist. In particular, recurison theoretic decision problemsreplace standard optimisation paradigms in economic analysis. Economic theoretic questions, posed recursion-theoretically, lead to answers that are ambiguous: undecidable choices, uncomputable learning processes, and algorithmically unplayable games become standard answers. Professor Velupillaiargues that a recursion theoretic formalisation of economic analysisComputable Economicsmakes the subject intrinsically inductive and computational.

Kumaraswamy Velupillai is with the Department of Economics and the Centre for Experimental and Computational Economics at the University of Trento, Italy. He is also Senior Professor of Economics at the Madras School of Economics, India.