This manual introduces and provides usage details for an application we have developed called VIKAASA, as well as the library of functions underlying it. VIKAASA runs in GNU Octave or MATLAB®, using the numerical computing and graphing capabilities of those packages to approximate, visualise...

This paper describes a suite of MATLAB® routines devised to provide an approximately optimal solution to an infinite-horizon stochastic optimal control problem. The suite is an updated version of that described in [1] and [2]. Its routines implement a policy improvement algorithm to optimise a...

A powerful method for computing Nash equilibria in constrained, multi-player games is created when the relaxation algorithm and the Nikaido-Isoda function are used within a MATLAB application. This paper describes that application, which is able to solve static and open-loop dynamic games...

Maintaining an open economy within certain bounds on inflation, output gap and exchange rate can help sustainable economic development. Macroeconomics proposes monetary-policy models that describe evolution of the above quantities. We use one such model, constituted by a four-metastate...

Consider a lump-sum pension fund problem, in which an agent deposits an amount with a fund manager up front and is later repaid a lump sum x(T) after time T. The fund manager may be both cautious in seeking a payoff x(T) meeting a certain target, but relaxed toward the possibility of exceeding...

We provide an introduction to a model of social inequality dynamics. Because capital is distributed less equally than labour, we propose that that one of the main forces driving income inequality is the ratio of factor shares. In this paper we give an easy proof to show that this ratio is driven...

This paper examines whether changes in New Zealand income inequality can be attributed to the shares of national income taken by capital and labour. Data on income inequality aggregates both capital income (rents, interest, profits) and labour income (wages and salaries). It is possible that...

This study builds on recent findings that target-based utility measures, used in the dynamic portfolio optimisation, deliver investment policies that can generate leftskewed payoff distributions. These policies can lead to small probabilities of low payoffs. This is in contrast to the classical...

When Economic Consequences of the Peace appeared during December 1919 it was an immediate publishing success, although Keynes’s argument that the book was a serious work of economics met with a controversial response that continues to the present day. While most critics’ focus on the books...

Were Scots to be found concentrated in particular occupations? Did networks, whether through common origin, associational life, religion, employment or marital connections facilitate the careers of Scots in the colonies? Were Scots different from other immigrants, especially the English, on any...