From their page on Optimal Taxation:<p><pre><code> # == Test that nu has a real solution before assigning == #
warning_msg = """
Hint: you probably set government spending too {}. Elect a {}
Congress and start over.
"""
disc = a0**2 - 4 * a0 * b0
if disc >= 0:
nu = 0.5 * (a0 - sqrt(disc)) / a0
else:
print "There is no Ramsey equilibrium for these parameters."
print warning_msg.format('high', 'Republican')
sys.exit(0)
# == Test that the Lagrange multiplier has the right sign == #
if nu * (0.5 - nu) < 0:
print "Negative multiplier on the government budget constraint."
print warning_msg.format('low', 'Democratic')
sys.exit(0)</code></pre>
Thomas Sargent was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2011 together with Christopher A. Sims "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy"<p>Fellow laureate Krugman: "S and S played a key role in developing methods that let the data speak instead": <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/go-princeton-and-nyu/" rel="nofollow">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/go-princeton-and...</a><p>The models here however aren't econometric, they are for theoretical economics. The Kalman filter can be used for 10001 different things.
Though I'm glad to see more intro material for quantitative economics, I am a bit perplexed by the scope/emphasis of this text.<p>For instance, here's how many times the following words appear in it:<p><pre><code> Money : 0 mentions
Incentive(s) : 1 mention
Market(s) : 0 mentions
</code></pre>
I'm no quantatative Economist, but in what way is this an economics text, as opposed to just an algorithms/modeling text?<p>(I'm not saying it ISN'T an economics text... I'm just hoping someone can genuinely answer my newbie question :-)
Stachurski's book goes into the underlying theory more deeply with code examples. It's also got a very good/practical introduction into real analysis and measure theory. Great resource for modern computational economics.