research notes: Closing the case on closure in Cole's model

In his response to Closure in Cole's Reformulated Leontief Model (Jackson et al. 1997) Cole presents the mechanics of his solution. His spreadsheet demonstration of the model, however, fails to fully address the conceptual issues and model specification concerns raised in our critique. His demonstration does enable us to provide a sorely needed formalization that pinpoints the inconsistencies in his model. While we join with Cole in urging modellers to strive for clarity, transparency, and utility, we caution against allowing these goals to cause us to lose sight of internal consistency requirements.