Posts Tagged: Dublin

UL / irelandin2050 — No Comments
7
Nov 09

The Future Sound of Dublin: Dublin in 2050

Liffey Sunset a la Nokia - Dublin, Ireland
Image by féileacán via Flickr

Published in The Dubliner.

Not changed utterly. Things will change in Dublin, but they will not change utterly. Dublin in 1970 was similar to Dublin in 2009, and Dublin in 2050 will be outwardly similar. The intervening days between today and 2050 – about 15,000 of them – offer us the opportunity to make things better for the children who will succeed us.

Grey is the new black By the year 2050, one in four workers will be over 65, and one in ten will be over 80. That’s right, I said “workers.” You will be working into your 70s and 80s; advances in healthcare and an increasing retirement age mean many of us will work 40, 50, perhaps even 60 years of our lives. So Dublin will be a grey city, with older people much more visible on the streets. Our golden years will be golden, and as culture and fashion move to accommodate the preferences of this large demographic, it’s going to be hip to be older.

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UL — No Comments
19
Aug 08

Using Mathematica to Explore the Mathematics of Modern Growth Theory

Mathematica

Here’s a paper I’m presenting at a Mathematica symposium at Trinity College, Dublin on September 15. The notes are 43 pages long, and cover aspects of modern growth theory, the mathematical tools behind some canonical models, and show how to implement these growth models in Mathematica.

The paper covers Solow, Romer, Mankiw-Romer-Weil, as well as Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans growth models. They also contain pedagogical notes on linear and dynamic programming, differential equations, and numerical analysis.

Right click the link below to download the paper. The Source file which produced the paper is quite large (18mb), so if you’d like a copy, please email me.

growththeorymacronotes_v3_reduced

Really, these notes represent a fairly good attempt at writing in the old Mathematica style. The new Mathematica style is built around usable pedagogical instruments called Demonstrations, which show the user the idea you’re trying to convey graphically and numerically, while the user never sees a line of Mathematica code. So far I’ve not learned how to build demonstrations, but I will over the next term for my two classes.

The next steps in enlarging the notes is to connect the growth models to real world data series like the Penn World Tables, and econometrics. From there one can use Mathematica for sensible policy exercises in growth and development economics.

I’m looking forward to the symposium, and hope to learn a lot from the other presenters.