Notes On Economic Time Series Analysis System Theoretic Perspectives

Notes on Economic Time Series Analysis: System Theoretic Perspectives

In seminars and graduate level courses I have had several opportunities to discuss modeling and analysis of time series with economists and economic graduate students during the past several years. These experiences made me aware of a gap between what economic graduate students are taught about vector-valued time series and what is available in recent system literature. Wishing to fill or narrow the gap that I suspect is more widely spread than my personal experiences indicate, I have written these notes to augment and reor ganize materials I have given in these courses and seminars. I have endeavored to present, in as much a self-contained way as practicable, a body of results and techniques in system theory that I judge to be relevant and useful to economists interested in using time series in their research. I have essentially acted as an intermediary and interpreter of system theoretic results and perspectives in time series by filtering out non-essential details, and presenting coherent accounts of what I deem to be important but not readily available, or accessible to economists. For this reason I have excluded from the notes many results on various estimation methods or their statistical properties because they are amply discussed in many standard texts on time series or on statistics.

System-Theoretic Methods in Economic Modelling I

The value of applying system-theoretic concepts to economic modelling problems arises from the fact that it offers a unifying framework for modelling dynamic systems. In addition to offering this powerful conceptual framework, it provides a wide range of tools useful in applied work. System-theoretic techniques enter predominantly two stages of economic modelling efforts: the stage of model construction and the stage of model application in accordance with the modelling. The objective of this and subsequent volumes on System-Theoretic Methods in Economic Modelling I is to initiate and/or intensify dialogues between researchers and practitioners within and across the disciplines involved. This first volume brings together papers exhibiting a wide range of system-theoretic techniques and applications to economic problems. The papers have been divided into two groups, following roughly--but not necessarily--the above classification into the construction and application stages of economic modelling. The papers in the first group focus on the identification of dynamic and static systems, while the papers in the second group address dynamic optimization problems.

Dynamics of Macrosystems