In this research, a first order Markov model is built from a corpus of bagana music, a traditional lyre from Ethiopia. Different ways in which low order Markov models can be used to build quality assessment metrics for an optimization algorithm are explained. These are then implemented in a...

I introduce and evaluate a new stochastic simulation method for dynamic economic models. It is based on recent work in the operations research and engineering literatures (Van Roy et. al, 1997; Powell, 2007; Bertsekas, 2011). The baseline method involves rewriting the household's dynamic program in...

In facility layout problems, a major concern is the optimal design or remodeling of the facilities of an organization. The decision maker's objective is to arrange the facility in an optimal way, so that the interaction among functions (i.e. machines, inventories, persons) and places (i.e....

In facility layout problems, a major concern is the optimal design or remodeling of the facilities of an organization. The decision maker’s objective is to arrange the facility in an optimal way, so that the interaction among functions (i.e. machines, inventories, persons) and places (i.e....

Linear Methods are often used to compute approximate solutions to dynamic models, as these models often cannot be solved analytically. Linear methods are very popular, as they can easily be implemented. Also, they provide a useful starting point for understanding more elaborate numerical...

This note examines a numerical approach for computing American option prices in the lognormal jump–diffusion context. The approach uses the known transition density of the process to build a discrete-time, homogenous Markov chain to approximate the target jump–diffusion process. Numerical...

Programs that work very well in optimizing convex functions very often perform poorly when the problem has multiple local minima or maxima. They are often caught or trapped in the local minima/maxima. Several methods have been developed to escape from being caught in such local optima. The...

In general, complex and large dimensional models are needed to solve real economic problems. Due to these characteristics, there is either no analytical solution for them or they are not attainable. As a result, solutions can be only obtained through numerical methods. Thus, the growing...

Dynamic optimization problems cover a large class of problems in theoretical and applied economics. A simple iterative algorithm with fast convergence is proposed. It is demonstrated that the algorithm in a few steps produce excellent analytic (closed form) approximations including error bounds...

This paper presents a brief general history of the derivative and the beginnings and development of the differential calculus in economics, better known as marginal analysis. Moreover, we mention the various notations and interpretations of the derivative that usually appear in textbooks and...