From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 07 1998 - 09:52:51 MDT
J. Maxwell Legg writes:
>>>It is easier to get more variation in growth rates with endogenous
>>>growth models, and there is also less consensus on how to model
>>>endogenous growth. So to avoid the accusation that I cooked my big
>>>growth speedup implications, I choose to use exogenous growth.
>>>This may provide a conservative estimate of growth implications. ...
>>
>>That seems like a good reason to use exogenous growth. ...
>
>I'd say that having less consensus on how to model endogenous growth may
>mean there are more endogenous systems to choose to model from and large
>numbers of actual adequate trials to take place instead of supression of
>large numbers of models. Wouldn't a wider field be a better base to choose
>from than continuing with the restricted exogenous growth model. More
>challenging may be to allow the fittest model to continue to grow and in
>reality cease to be a model and proving something or the other.
I'm not sure I follow you. We're talking about what best models the
world economy as a whole, not about models of competing entities where
the fastest growing one will win out over the others. My choice of
exogenous growth models is to provide more of a lower bound on growth
rates, not to give the closest model to reality. In modeling, more realism
comes at the expense of more complexity, and complexity makes it harder
to compare and evaluate models. So one often prefers to examine simpler
models.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
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