Economic Control Theory
This book discusses some concepts of an economic system, the role of information in an economic system and some methods to deal with dynamic economic issues. The author tries to 1) interpret economic coupling, economic feedback and economic stability in an economic system; 2) introduce entropy and information efficiency in an economic system; 3) address the classic puzzles, such as dynamic optimal prices, with mathematical methods of calculus of variations and the maximum principle; 4) explore the optimal control problems of economic growth and accumulation rate in economic management; 5) solve issues within stochastic economic systems with dynamic programming. A further contribution to his previous work, this book represents the pinnacle of the author’s research on theory of economic control. Graduate students and researchers who wish to obtain a systematic understanding of the author’s thoughts on this issue and how this may shed light on system reform willfind this book extremely helpful.
Xiaokai Yang (6 October 1948 – 7 July 2004) was a Chinese-Australian economist. He was a Fellow of the Centre for International Development at Harvard University, Chair Professor of Economics at Monash University, Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences successively. His major contribution was the development of infra-marginal economics, which are those discrete decisions that dictate future path dependencies. Yang was a prolific author in economics with academic works published in both English and Chinese, including Specialization and Economic Organization, Economics: New Classical Versus Neoclassical Frameworks, Economic Development and the Division of Labor: Inframarginal Versus Marginal Analysis. He was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Economics (2002 and 2003).