04/09/2015
Less than fully rational agents are hard
Start from the opposite direction
Use simple trial and error
Modeling Contribution
"Suppose first that the market price is above the equilibrium price […] There is a surplus of the good: suppliers are unable to sell all they want at the going price. […] They respond to the surplus by cutting their prices. Prices continue to fall until the market reaches the equilibrium."
Robustness Check
A seller wants to sell \(y^*\) kilos of cheese each day. Today he charged price \(p_t\) and sold \(y_t\) kilos. How should he sets tomorrow's price \(p_{t+1}\)
\(e_t = y^* -y_t\)
\(p_{t+1} = a e_t + b \sum_0^t e_{\tau} d\tau + c \frac{de_t}{d_t} + p_0\)
Absence of model knowledge
Assume unsophisticated users
Simple to code
Simple to fit
Reactive/Subsumption Architecture
Zero-Intelligence (Plus)
Probe and Adjust
Gintis
Making 50 kilos of cheese a day require action over multiple markets: milk, workers, sales. How do we generalize PID pricing over multiple markets?
How do we decide how many kilos of cheese to produce in order to maximize profits?
Profits are maximized when marginal benefits equal marginal costs
\(\text{Marginal Benefit: } p_t = w_t \text{ :Marginal Costs}\)
Use a PID controller to find how for which production target \(p_t = w_t\)
Lower Frequency
If you have market power, you need to take that into account
\(\frac{\partial \Pi}{\partial q} = 0\)
\(p + q \frac{\partial p}{\partial q} = w + q \frac{\partial w}{\partial q}\)
\(p_t + \mu_p = w_t + \mu_w\)
Use a PID with error \(p_t + \mu_p - w_t - \mu_w\)
PI trial and error produce paired data \(p_t,y_t\)
Can run a linear regression over them to discover \(\mu_p\)
Use Kalman Filters
Gunnery Control and Norbert Wiener
"The world, understood cybernetically, was a world of goal-oriented feedback mechanisms with learning. Cybernetics,then, took computer-controlled gun control and layered it in an ontologically indiscriminate fashion across the academic disciplinary board."
Naive trial and error stops working
A model where sticky prices achieve equilibrium and flexible prices don't
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