Papers by Masoud Derakhshan
Economic Indigenization and Islamic Economics: Remarks on Comparative and Foundational Approaches
Pizhūhishnāmah-i Iqtiṣād-i Inirzhī-i Īrān, 2015
We have shown that the reliance on foreign investment within the framework of oil contracts with ... more We have shown that the reliance on foreign investment within the framework of oil contracts with international oil companies has not been and will not be productive in the transfer and development of technology in Iranian upstream oil industry unless the following conditions are satisfied: i) adequate growth in the propositional and prescriptive knowledge related to oil industry to create a satisfactory absorption capacity, and ii) the active role of regulatory institutions for supervising, managing and enhancing efficiency in the market for technology to secure an effective utilization of the absorption capacity. It is emphasized that a careful identification of players in the market for oil technology transfer and development, and the realization of the processes of weakening and strengthening positions of international oil companies and service oil companies in this market, respectively, is the prerequisite in the design of optimum oil technology policies in Iran. Despite the imp...
In this paper, we first consider the role of rational expectations, the Lucas critique and the po... more In this paper, we first consider the role of rational expectations, the Lucas critique and the policy ineffectiveness debate in economic applications of optimal control theory. The problem of time-inconsistency in optimal control of macroeconomic models with rational expectations will then be analyzed. The impact of reputation and the stochastic environment on the problem of inconsistency in dynamic choice together with the question of how can the developments in optimal control of macroeconomic models with forward-looking expectations contribute to the practice of econometric model building are the other topics which are discussed. We have adopted a historical approach in this paper, and the scope of our analysis is confined to the basic contributions made in the 20 th Century.
This paper examines critically the contributions of Cournot, Jevons and Walras as the founders of... more This paper examines critically the contributions of Cournot, Jevons and Walras as the founders of classical mathematical economics from a methodological standpoint. Advances in different economic schools and doctrines in the 19th century produced an environment of multi-dimensionality in economic analysis which was regarded by the pioneers of classical mathematical economists as a chaotic state. We have demonstrated that the formation of this new discipline, known equivalently as pure or scientific economics, was a response to this so-called chaotic state. We have also shown that the erroneous logic of abstraction in the sense of reducing a multi-dimensional economic system to a one-dimensional mechanical framework as the methodological basis of classical mathematical economics has been the origin of serious shortcomings in mathematical treatment of economics. Based on the writings of Jevons and Walras we have provided evidences to support the claim that advances in Marxian economic...
International journal of business, 2017
We have first demonstrated that Debreu’s view regarding the publication of The Theory of Games an... more We have first demonstrated that Debreu’s view regarding the publication of The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Morgenstern in 1944 as the birth of modern mathematical economics is not convincing. In this paper, we have proposed the hypothesis that the coordinated research programs in the 1930’s, initiated by the Econometric Society and the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics with the objective of unifying economic theory, mathematics and statistics, can be regarded as the beginning of modern mathematical economics as well as econometrics. We have argued that this unification has failed to satisfactorily bridge the gap between mathematical economics and the real world economic issues. However, contrary to Marshall's view that mathematics is not an engine of inquiry in economics but is only a shorthand language, we have established in this paper that the application of mathematics in modern mathematical economics can, under certain conditions, pr...
Methodological Shortcomings in Classical Mathematical Economics: A Critical Examination of the Contributions of Cournot, Jevons and Walras
This paper examines critically the contributions of Cournot, Jevons and Walras as the founders of... more This paper examines critically the contributions of Cournot, Jevons and Walras as the founders of classical mathematical economics from a methodological standpoint. Advances in different economic schools and doctrines in the 19th century produced an environment of multi-dimensionality in economic analysis which was regarded by the pioneers of classical mathematical economists as a chaotic state. We have demonstrated that the formation of this new discipline, known equivalently as pure or scientific economics, was a response to this so-called chaotic state. We have also shown that the erroneous logic of abstraction in the sense of reducing a multi-dimensional economic system to a one-dimensional mechanical framework as the methodological basis of classical mathematical economics has been the origin of serious shortcomings in mathematical treatment of economics. Based on the writings of Jevons and Walras we have provided evidences to support the claim that advances in Marxian economic...
International journal of business, 2015
Economists were interested in economic stabilization policies as early as the 1930’s but the form... more Economists were interested in economic stabilization policies as early as the 1930’s but the formal applications of stability theory from the classical control theory to economic analysis appeared in the early 1950’s when a number of control engineers actively collaborated with economists on economic stability and feedback mechanisms. The theory of optimal control resulting from the contributions of mathematicians Lev Semenovich Pontryagin and Richard Ernest Bellman in the late 1950’s was first applied successfully to models of economic growth in the 1960’s by the economists who were interested in discovering the optimality properties of economic growth trajectories. It is shown that the collaborations of control engineers with econometricians in the 1970’s on the computation of optimal state and control trajectories in econometric models were the earliest attempts to demonstrate the possibility of applying deterministic, stochastic and adaptive optimal control to the numerical sol...
International journal of business, 2014
The role of mathematics in economic analysis is not yet a settled question. Smith, Ricardo, Mill ... more The role of mathematics in economic analysis is not yet a settled question. Smith, Ricardo, Mill and other eminent classical economists did not use mathematics in their economic theorizations. We have defined classical mathematical economics as the whole body of literature in mathematical treatment of economics originating mainly from the contributions of Cournot, Jevons and Walras. There are a number of different explanations for the origin of classical mathematical economics suggested by different authors, which may also explain the lack of general interests among classical economists in using mathematical methods in economic analysis. This paper attempts to examine critically the views put forward by Debreu, Cournot, Walras and von Neumann and Morgenstern on the origin of mathematics in economics. Using historical evidences through direct references to their original works, we have demonstrated that none of their views are convincing. It is also shown that the tradition of class...
Optimality conditions for consumption behavior with liquidity constraints are obtained using the ... more Optimality conditions for consumption behavior with liquidity constraints are obtained using the functional recurrence equation in Bellman’s dynamic programming and the generalized Hamiltonian function in Pontryagin’s maximum principle. The rejection of Hall’s random walk hypothesis is then established for liquidity constrained consumers. An explicit mathematical relation is formulated which demonstrates the effects of liquidity constraints on consumption, which implies that under certain conditions the liquidity constraint may shift the optimal consumption profile forward even when the rate of time preference exceeds the interest rate. Our analysis is further developed to time-varying interest rates. Using the Kuhn-Tucker conditions, we have shown the interactions between the timevarying interest rate, the utility discount rate and the severity of liquidity constraints. It is shown, using the coefficient of absolute risk aversion, that how the time-varying interest rate may affect ...
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Papers by Masoud Derakhshan