This book reports the results of five empirical studies undertaken in the early seventies by a collaboration headed by Professor Morishima. It deals with applications of the general equilibrium models whose theoretical aspects have been one of Professor Morishima's main interests. Four main econometric models are constructed for the USA, the UK, and Japan. These are used as a basis for the discussion of various topics in economic theory, such as: the existence and stability or instability of the neoclassical path of full employment growth equilibrium and a von Neumann-type path of balanced growth at constant proces; the antimony between price-stability and full employment; the Samuelson-LeChatelier principle; the theory of the balanced-budget multiplier; the three Hicksian laws of the gross substitutes system; the Brown-Jones super-multipliers of international trade, and so on. In addition, this 1972 work makes a quantitative evaluation for the US economy of monetary and fiscal policies as short-run measures for achieving full employment; the effectiveness of built-in flexibility of taxes in the UK economy is discussed; and estimates are made of the rapid decrease in disguised unemployment in post-war Japan.

As our title reveals, we focus on optimal control methods and applications relevant to linear dynamic economic systems in discrete-time variables. We deal only with discrete cases simply because economic data are available in discrete forms, hence realistic economic policies should be established in discrete-time structures. Though many books have been written on optimal control in engineering, we see few on discrete-type optimal control. More over, since economic models take slightly different forms than do engineer ing ones, we need a comprehensive, self-contained treatment of linear optimal control applicable to discrete-time economic systems. The present work is intended to fill this need from the standpoint of contemporary macroeconomic stabilization. The work is organized as follows. In Chapter 1 we demonstrate instru ment instability in an economic stabilization problem and thereby establish the motivation for our departure into the optimal control world. Chapter 2 provides fundamental concepts and propositions for controlling linear deterministic discrete-time systems, together with some economic applica tions and numerical methods. Our optimal control rules are in the form of feedback from known state variables of the preceding period. When state variables are not observable or are accessible only with observation errors, we must obtain appropriate proxies for these variables, which are called "observers" in deterministic cases or "filters" in stochastic circumstances. In Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, Luenberger observers and Kalman filters are discussed, developed, and applied in various directions. Noticing that a separation principle lies between observer (or filter) and controller (cf."

This book reports the results of five empirical studies undertaken in the early seventies by a collaboration headed by Professor Morishima. It deals with applications of the general equilibrium models whose theoretical aspects have been one of Professor Morishima's main interests. Four main econometric models are constructed for the USA, the UK, and Japan. These are used as a basis for the discussion of various topics in economic theory, such as: the existence and stability or instability of the neoclassical path of full employment growth equilibrium and a von Neumann-type path of balanced growth at constant proces; the antimony between price-stability and full employment; the Samuelson-LeChatelier principle; the theory of the balanced-budget multiplier; the three Hicksian laws of the gross substitutes system; the Brown-Jones super-multipliers of international trade, and so on. In addition, this 1972 work makes a quantitative evaluation for the US economy of monetary and fiscal policies as short-run measures for achieving full employment; the effectiveness of built-in flexibility of taxes in the UK economy is discussed; and estimates are made of the rapid decrease in disguised unemployment in post-war Japan.