This paper gives an outline of evolution of the concept and econometrics of production function, which was one of the central apparatus of neoclassical economics. It shows how the famous Cobb-Douglas production function was indeed invented by von Thünen and Wicksell, how the Constant Elasticity...

In the Input-Output Analytic framework, production (X) is related to final demand (C) through the B [while B= INV(I-A), where A is the technical coefficients matrix and INV(.) means inverted (.)], such that X=BC. Generally, the elements of A and C are considered to be non-stochastic and...

The paper is an attempt to evaluate the efficiency of Pena's DP-2 method over a host of methods used to make composite indices. To undertake this exercise, variables and data used and methodology adopted in Human Development Report 2011 are employed along with nine other methodologies employed...

Construction of (composite) indices by the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is very common, but this method has a preference for highly correlated variables to the poorly correlated variables in the dataset. However, poor correlation does not entail marginal importance, since correlation...

This paper uses mixed combinatorial-cum-real particle swarm method to obtain a heuristically optimal order in which the constituent variables can be arranged so as to yield some generalized maximum entropy synthetic indicators that represent the constituent variables in the best...

Pena's method of construction of a synthetic indicator is very sensitive to the order in which the constituent variables (whose linear aggregation yields the synthetic indicator) are arranged. Due to this, Pena's method can at present give only an arbitrary synthetic indicator whose...

This paper constructs composite indices of globalization of 131 countries spread over the five continents and classified into World-I, World-II and World-III countries. KOF, the Business Cycle Research Institute in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich is the source of data used in...

This essay portrays the major currents in recent economic thinking against the orthodoxy and dogmatism of neoclassical economics. It places behavioral economics, experimental economics, evolutionary economics, ecological economics, new institutional economics, agent-based computational economics...