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| The Economics Web Institute offers you to freely explore classical and innovative issues in economics and management, drawing on a large array of theoretical reflections, real data, and interactive software models. The Institute sweeps across a wide range of topics, from macroeconomics to market structures, from international trade to management, because we believe in the emergence of aggregate new properties from micro heterogeneity and in the intertwining between individual economic agents with macro events. Albeit open in exploration for further concepts, the Institute tends to use and develop mainly the evolutionary economics paradigm, which we feel particularly suitable to 21st century, to its complexity and hectic dynamics of economies and societies across the globe.
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| Download all site compressed
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| News: University seminar
by our director on fair tourism |
| Selected contents |
| Essay:
Realising their rights? Self-assessed
community needs in 30 settlements in South Africa (2007) Based on a innovative field survey, the needs in poor rural and urban areas have been assessed leading to specific proposals of improvement. This methodology can be repeated in other contexts.
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| Essay:
Package size, price, and consumer rules Optimal commercial offer by retailers depends not only on efficient logistics and buyer's power with respect to the supply chain: it hinges on the segmentation of customers according to their rules of choice. In this paper, an example of purchase basket over many categories, varieties and package sizes is constructed and commented, freely offering the Excel file with all open programming code. Consumers can find out their style of shopping; managers have a device to fix the prices in your commercial premise, the researchers and the absolute beginners can simply explore the unexpected consequences of the interaction of such trivial, but real, things like package size, weight, and budget constraints.
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| Key
concept: Repurchase
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| Essay: A graph representation of a basic macroeconomic scheme: the IS-LM model Students of the first year of economics usually learn the basic functioning of the economy thanks to the IS-LM model. Here we present an original representation that concentrates the entire model in just one sheet. The researcher will find many innovative features to the model. To a creative economist, this representation offers the immediate possibility of adding further variables and outlining new or different linkages between variables. Essay - If you have never heard of IS-LM model, click here.
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| Essay:Proximity
in product space and diversification strategies Key concept: Social groups
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| Key
concept: Remittances
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| Key concept: Profits
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| Bilateral
trade by product A huge cubic matrix of international trade by exporter, importer and product. More than 1 million records indicating trade among any two countries in the world (total and by product). From this datase you can extract the world market for more than 1000 product categories (standard SITC codes at 4-digits of aggregation), exhaustive of merchandise trade. Cumulative values for 1998, 1999 and 2000. Data in DBF format, easily readably by free viewers and MS Access.
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| Essay:
Firm-specific fixed costs and variable costs:
a model of market dynamics What happens when firms that have different mixes of fixed and variable costs compete on the same market? What happens when their break-even point is different and they compete on both price and quality? In this easy evolutionary model we introduce a market with a large number of firms, each characterised by a different cost structure, and you'll be able to study the evolution of profits over time, according to changes in demand and endogenous technology.
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| Key
concept: Degree
of difficulty
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| Software
and Essay:
Consumer theory: the neoclassical model and its opposite alternative
More importantly, it proposes you the evolutionary alternative for interpreting real consumers' choices.
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| Software:
Isoquants
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| Economic data: Exchange rates for 200 currencies, spanning across more than 20 years In one sheet you can track and compare the yearly dynamics of 200 world currencies on the long term. Currency crises, fixed exchange rates and wide fluctuations in a fully international perspective. Useful for any analysis of world trade.
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| Essay:
Bilateral import promotion as a key to
integration in a hierarchical world Changing the world order from below: a challenge for rich and poor countries. This is a first policy to raise integration relations instead of dependence and isolation. Economic data: Bilateral and
total trade of all countries in the world: a long time series
An amazing huge dataset with the bilateral trade balance, imports, and export of 186 countries with each other (square matrices of 186 x 186), with yearly data from 1948 to 2000 (52 matrices). Standardized consistent values.
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| Key concept: Foreign direct investment
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| Key concept: Substitute goods Key concept: Poverty Key concept: Advertising
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| Economic
data: Consumers' microdata: incomes,
preferences, purchase timing
Economic data: Wage microdata: a random sample with age, education, sex, marital status, sector, occupation and other variables
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| Essay:
Exports and their linkages to literacy
An exploration of the manyfolds relations of exports and the growth of the number of people capable to write.
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| Essay:
Trade with thy neighbour Proximity international trade creates the kind of relative bilateral monopoly that might bring to economic integration on equal foot, with deep reciprocation and internalization of bilateral externalities. Marginalized sub-national regions and communities might thrive because of the activation of legal trade across the border. This paper assesses the importance of trade between neighbours for the involved regions and for the overall structure of the world relationships.
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| Essay: The production function of students' grade A critical introduction to the neoclassical concept and use of the "production function". To help students understanding the concept and its limitations, the author proposes to take into consideration a particular production process that should be well known to them: the production of grades in an exams after an education course. Key concept: Trade balance
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| Key
concept: Gross
Domestic Product
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| Essay:
Hierarchy structures in world trade
Check the position of your country in the world system!
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| Key
concept: Exchange
rate
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| Economic data: 2004 Labour market levels and trends in all countries of the world: employment and unemployment in the general population, the youth, the women PDF [1200 KB]
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| Key concept: Innovation
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| Key concept: Energy Key concept: Consumption Key concept: Wages
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| Essay: Consumer decision rules for agent-based models A clear-cut introduction to evolutionary consumption microfoundation in agent-based models. It proposes several rules to cope with budget constraints, product differentiation, purchase repetition over time. In particular, you shall find the rules of consumer behavour used in the freely downloadable model "Race to market", which gave rise to these micro-data. Moreover, it suggests to ACE
modellers a "golden rule" for more realistic models.
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| Essay: Dynamic competition with bi-directional product differentiation, bounded rational consumers, innovation, advertising, and finance Useful
for managers, researchers and students, this business game is a
powerful tool for understanding product life cycles, consumers'
attitudes, innovation management
strategies, competitive intelligent tactics. Essay
and software automatic download [2400 KB]
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| Essay:
Who matters in a complex society?
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| Key concept: Feedback
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| Key concept: Imitation
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| Economic data: Daily time spent on different activities by employment status, sex, and age MS Excel [19 KB]
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| Key concept: Product differentiation
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| Economic data: Long-term macroeconomic data for 136 countries and 42 years The most user-friendly distribution of the main international database on GDP components (consumption, investment, public expenditure and net exports) for 136 countries and 42 years. Excellent for international comparisons, long-term growth enquiries and business cycle analysis, since it provides real values at constant prices comparable over time and countries.
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| Essay: Influence of delayed feedback on learning, performance and strategy search - revisited Economic agents live in an uncertain environment, where they have to learn how to behave and which is the performance of their actions. Strategy is not given: they have to search for the "right one", if exists at all. Feedback is a crucial mechanism linking the past with the future, possibly helping the agents in their tasks. In particular, the timing of feedback signals can deeply influence their effects. Is immediate feedback always superior to delayed feedback? Are the features of the environment irrelevant? This paper offer original experimental results on the influence of delayed feedback on learning, performance and strategy search.
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| Book: An Artificial Market Model of a Foreign Exchange Market - by Kiyoshi Izumi In this study, the author proposes a new approach to foreign exchange (forex) market studies: the artificial market approach - by integrating fieldwork studies and multiagent computer models in order to explain the micro and macro relation in markets.
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| Key concept: Tax revenue
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| Economic data: Tax revenue in OECD countries (1966-2000) plus a comparison in tax systems
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| Economic data: Tax revenue composition (income personal and corporate tax, indirect tax,...)
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| Economic data: Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy (HALE) (55 countries)
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| Essay: Innovation and Growth: A Schumpeterian model of innovation The creation of a positive feedback loop is what makes the difference between sustained growth and gradual (or sudden) decline. A Positive Feedback Loop Innovation System (POLIS) is here modelled along Schumpeterian lines and applied to the actual economy of Taiwan.
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| Essay: A new approach to business fluctuations: heterogeneous interacting agents, scaling laws and financial fragility Business fluctuations in GDP, investment, etc. can be explained in a new way. The authors present a simple agent-based model, whose core is the interaction of heterogeneous financially fragile firms and a banking sector. In their framework, the origin of business fluctuations can be traced back to the ever changing configuration of the network of heterogeneous interacting firms. Simulations of the model replicate surprisingly well an impressive set of stylized facts, particularly two well known universal laws. Essay [300 KB]
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| Key
concept: Investment
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| Book: High-Tech Start-Ups and Industry Dynamics in Silicon Valley Using two unique longitudinal databases, Junfu Zhang investigates firm formation, growth, mortality, and migration in Silicon Valley during the 1990s and explain how the region evolved. After extraordinary economic and innovation success in the late 1990s, Silicon Valley entered a deep recession in 2001. This study seeks to answer tough policy-relevant and empirical questions of interest everywhere in the world.
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| Book: How macroeconomics is changing thanks to computer - by Valentino Piana (2000) Macroeconomics is deeply changing thanks to computer. It becomes easier and more realistic, while the process of integration between macroeconomics and other economic disciplines is given a decisive acceleration. From econometrics to formal models, passing through the revolution in teaching and learning techniques, this book offers an up-to-date overview of what is happening.
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| Key concept: Inflation |
| Key concept: Savings
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| Economic data: Savings behaviors in the UK population (2000 and 2001) PDF [860 KB]
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| Essay: The new conceptual limits of laisser-faire Prof.
Sergio Bruno presents his standpoint in terms of a wide and
modern critique of laisser-fairism. General economic equilibrium
is put into question on the basis of new conceptions of time, uncertainty
and complementarities in production processes. Thus, "well
targeted policies may be of much help. [...] What these different
forms of intervention have in common is that they are based neither
on coercion nor on traditional incentives, but rather upon suasion
and negotiations". Essay [470 KB]
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| Essay: Animal Spirits, Lumpy Investment and Endogenous Business Cycles Going well beyond Real Business Cycle or New-Keynesian perspectives, this evolutionary model with fully micro-founded heterogeneous bounded-rational agents is able to generate self-sustaining patterns of long-term growth and endogenous business cycles, delivering strong reasons for really observed stylized facts (e.g. on investment, GDP, consumption, employment ; unemployment rate; firm size distributions).
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| Essay:
Evaluating the benefits from liberalization in agriculture: are
standard Walrasian models relevant? Liberalisation, preventing price stabilisation policies, results in more instability, and a decrease in welfare, as it is numerically demonstrated in both a partial equilibrium model of the world sugar industry and a GTAP-style general equilibrium model of the world economy.
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| Key concept: Costs
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Essay:
Survival
strategies: innovate or die 
To devise new modified versions earlier than expected during the product life cycle can costs you cannibalising your own product but leaves no room to competitors, thus resulting in long-term business success.
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| Essay: Credit risk: a general scheme in a banking perspective What are the issues banks evaluate for assessing credit risk when they are going to give a credit facility to a borrower? This essay proposes a general synoptic scheme in order to answer to this question. The problem is crucial not only for the bank but also for the economy at large, since overall investment and consumption are affected by micro-decisions of this kind.
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Economic data: Stock exchange index for 10 markets (S&P500, Nikkei, Dax, Cac,...) - Daily quotes (1995-2000)
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| Key
concept: Interest
rates
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| Economic data: Lending and deposit interest rates in 13 EU countries (1980-2001) 92 national interest rates have been identified and allocated to ten broad categories - six for lending rates and four for deposit rates. MS Excel [180 KB]
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| Key
concept: Public
expenditure
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| Essay: Quality and health system: two worlds apart? Can Quality Management tools and principles, adapted to the peculiar features of the public health sector, help to solve the main challenges this system is presenting? Cost effectiveness, suitable solutions to people's needs and requests, the full account of human and professional relations could be better targeted using a Quality approach. This essay sets the stage for a discussion on the subject.
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| Essay: Italy: Regional differences in public health quality management systems This short essay presents a review of the various approaches applied by the different Italian Regions with regard to Quality Management in health care policy.
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| Economic data: Total expenditure on health in OECD countries (1960-2000)
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| Economic data: Quality of education: 16 indicators (26 countries)
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| Key
concept: Exports
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| Software:
You are an exporter Suitable for beginners and researchers.
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| Key
concept: Imports
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| Economic data: Inflation rates for 170 countries (1970-1996) Yearly dynamics of inflation is presented in one sheet. Is price stability a common feature of the world economies? Is hyperinflation a disease that hurts some groups of countries more than others? Discover the answers to these and many other questions just analysing the real data.
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| Essay
and Software:
You are a monopolist The traditional monopolist's choice about price and quantity is now given a new dynamic setting where you can interact. Demand is unknown and the produced good is durable across periods of time. Thus, sales needn't be equal to production since inventories can pile up and go down. A lot of strategic consequences arise, as you can discover playing with the business game.
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| Software:
Costs Software [2050 KB]
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| Key concept: Money |
| Key
concept: Balance
of payments |
| Key concept: Employment |
| Key concept: Unemployment |
| Economic data: Comparable wages for 162 jobs in 132 countries The MS Excel file with a user-friendly interface of the excellent dataset by Freeman - Oostendorp. Long-term time-series from 1983 to 1999. This data set allows for comparison of wages across countries for the same job, over time, underlining the differences between skilled and unskilled works. MS Excel [2.9 MB]
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| Economic data: Wages for 22 500 jobs across all industries The wage distribution with means and medians for a huge number of jobs. How much does a lawyer earn? How many times is he paid more than a food preparation worker? Discover wage inequality thanks to an authoritative US dataset. MS Excel [2.4 MB]
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| Economic data: Wages in New York A city wage distribution. MS Excel [79 KB]
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| Key concept: Productivity |
| Economic data: Industry-level output, employment, costs, investment, capital stocks over 38 years An excellent dataset for studying the evolution of hundreds of industries. MS Excel [4 MB]
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| Economic data: Oil world prices (1861-1999) A very long time-series of a crucial price for the world economy. Gain new insights in inflation tides and business cycles. MS Excel [7 KB]
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| Software:
The IS-LM model A Cartesian-space IS-LM model illustrating step-by-step how the curves arises from points. It reproduces what usually students learn in universities throughout the world, offering the possibility of changing the model parameters. It is a second example of Prof. Masaru Uzawa's collection of software.
Software [340 KB]
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| Economic data: EU data for all the variables in IS-LM model (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Switzerland and other 13 European countries) MS Excel [550 KB]
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| Economic data: Data for all the variables in IS-LM model Comprehensive of 54 variables in long-term annual and quarterly time-series, this US dataset is excellent for students to test the model as well as for researchers to develop original reflections. MS Excel [104 KB]
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| Economic data: Long-term interest rates in OECD countries (1982-1998) A small dataset on interest rates in developed countries. MS Excel [5 KB]
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| Economic data: Coffee world prices (1982 - 2000) Look at the difference in prices for consumers in importing countries and for growers in exporters country. Seasonality analysis feasible, since they are monthly data. MS Excel [80 KB]
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| Economic data: Cocoa beans world prices (1971 - 2001) MS Excel [5 KB]
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| Economic
data: World primary commodity prices (54 time series) - Agricolture
Raw Materials, Metals (e.g. Zinc, Iron, Aluminium, Copper), Fertilizers,
Petroleum, Natural Gas, etc. (1980-2001)
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| Key
concept: Price
level
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| Economic data: 93 Food products prices in 198 countries (1985-2001) The price of sugar, milk, meat and many more foodstuffs. Ideal to compare price structures over countries and time. By transforming these local-currency data in dollars, you can test the "one price law", according to which any good has the same price worldwide, after taken into account nominal exchange rates. Comparing with world wages, you get the real purchasing power of people in food terms.
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| Economic
data: Environmental taxes in 15 countries (1980-1999)
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| Key concept: Elasticity |
