NUI Galway Workshop on Computable Economics
Computability, Computational Complexity and Dynamical Systems
Theory in Economics and Finance
A one-week workshop on Computable Economics, in a ‘tutorial’ mode,
will be held in the department of economics at NUI Galway, 20-24,
March 2005.
The aim of the Tutorial Workshop will be to provide doctoral students,
Junior Faculty and interested Post-Doctoral scholars at Irish Universities,
and other resident members of Research Institutes in Ireland, a basic
grounding in the mathematical and experimental methods of Computable
Economics.
Senior scholars in the relevant disciplines, all of whom are pioneers in the
fields in which they are scheduled to lecture, will be available, throughout
the week of the Tutorial Workshop, for consultation, advice and help on
all matters regarding the contents of the lectures.
The invited lecturers are:
Professor Francisco Antonio Doria
Institute for Advanced Studies
University of São Paulo
São Paulo
and
School of Communications
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Professor Duncan Foley
Graduate Faculty
New School University
New York, USA
Professor Joe McCauley
Department of Physics
University of Houston
Houston, Texas, USA
Dr. Sheri M. Markose
Economics Department
Director: Centre For Computational Finance and Economic
Agents (CCFEA)
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester C04 3SQ
United Kingdom
Professor Jorma Rissanen
Finnish Academy of Sciences
Helsinki, Finland
and
IBM, San Jose
California, USA
Internal, NUI Galway, Lecturers and Research Assistants:
Professor Tom Boylan, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
Professor Vela Velupillai, Department of Economics, NUI Galway &
CISC/DERI
Dr Srinivasan Raghavendra, CISC/DERI
Mr Stephen Kinsella, Department of Economics, NUI Galway &
CISC/DERI
Brief Profiles of the Invited Lecturers:
Professor Francisco Doria, together with his colleague in São Paulo,
Professor Newton da Costa, was one of the first, almost a decade and a
half ago, to study and construct undecidable dynamical systems within
the mathematics of classical dynamics. They were also pioneers, together
with their doctoral student Marcelo Tsuji, in studying undecidability and
uncomputability issues in classical Game Theory. Two of the
contributions by Doria and da Costa (one with Tsuji), on these themes,
have become classics:
 Undecidability and Incompleteness in Classical Mechanics,
(jointly with N.C.A da Costa), International Journal of
Theoretical Physics. Vol.30, #8, 1991;
 The Incompleteness Theories of Games, (jointly with N.C.A da
Costa and Marcelo Tsuji), Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol.
27, 1998.
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Professor Duncan Foley is an acknowledged scholar of economic theory
and an outstanding pedagogical exponent of dynamical systems theory in
macroeconomics and economic dynamics. His recent Schumpeter
Lectures, delivered at the University of Graz, and published as, Unholy
Trinity: Labor, Capital and Land in the New Economy (Routledge,
London, 2003), provides a fresh and characteristically original reinterpretation of the methods of classical political economy, using the
vision and tools of the new sciences of complexity, to analyse and
understand the self-organising character of advanced industrial
economies regarded as complex, adaptive, non-equilibrium systems. Two
of his recent papers, of direct relevance to the themes of the Workshop,
are:
 The Co-evolution of Cooperation and Complexity in a MultiPlayer, Local-Interaction Prisoners’ Dilemma, (jointly with Peter
S. Albin), Complexity, Vol. 6, #3, 2001
 Statistical Equilibrium in Economics: Method, Interpretation and
an Example in, General Equilibrium: Problems and Prospects
edited by Fabio Petri and Frank Hahn, Routledge, London, 2003
Professor Joe McCauley is one of the leading scholars of nonlinear
dynamical systems theory from an algorithmic point of view and has
emerged, in recent years, with penetrating studies of the dynamics and
volatility of financial markets. His two classic studies in these fields are:
 Chaos, Dynamics and Fractals: An Algorithmic Approach to
Deterministic Chaos, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1993.
 Dynamics of Markets: Econophysics and Finance, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2004.
Dr Sheri Markose early recognised the significance of recursion theory
and model theory and was a pioneer in reformulating, in particular, the
macroeconomic problems of policy ineffectiveness and lack of structural
invariance, using the tools of modern mathematical logic. Her creative
energies have also been channelled, more recently, into Institution
building with the setting up of Centre For Computational Finance and
Economic Agents (CCFEA) at the University of Essex under her
Directorship. Two of her recent contributions are:
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 “The New Evolutionary Computational Paradigm Of Complex
Adaptive Systems: Challenges And Prospects For Economics
And Finance.” In: Genetic Algorithms and Genetic
Programming in Computational Finance, Edited by ShuHeng Chen, Kluwer Academic Publishers, (pp.443-484 ),
2002.
 “The Red Queen Principle and the Emergence of Efficient
Financial Markets: An Agent Based Approach” (jointly with
Edward Tsang and Serafin Martinez). Forthcoming in:
Proceedings of WEHIA-8 (Workshop of Heterogeneous
Interacting Agents), edited by Thomas Luz, SpringerVerlag, Heidelberg & New York, 2004.
Dr Jorma Rissanen is the acknowledged pioneer of Stochastic
Complexity, the field that made algorithmic complexity theory
computably feasible and was able to embed classical learning theory
within a formal, numerically feasible, theory of induction. His book
Stochastic Complexity in Statistical Inquiry (World Scientific, 1989)
made the Minimum Description Length principle widely practicable and
gave estimation theory a sound computable foundation, almost for the
first time since Gauss! Two classic papers by Dr Rissanen, on Stochastic
Complexity, are:
 “A Universal Prior for Integers and Estimation by Minimum
Description Length”, Annals of Statistics, Vol. 11, #2, 1983.
 “Stochastic Complexity”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society,
Series B, Vol. 49, #3, 1987.
A Synopsis of the aims and scope of the Tutorial Workshop
The basic aim of the week-long tutorial workshop is to make young
researchers in Ireland familiar with the field of computable economics.
With this aim in mind the series of lectures will concentrate on providing
pedagogical introductions to the mathematical methods of computable
economics with copious applications and numerical examples in
computational finance, game theory, business cycle theory, learning in
macroeconomic models and evolutionary growth theory. It is hoped that
the participants of the workshop will, at the end of the week of lectures
and tutorials, will be able to formulate their own research topics with a
serious computable content and even within the framework of
computable economics.
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Two Research Assistants, Dr S. Raghavendra and Mr S. Kinsella, would
be providing help with the use of Matlab and Mathematica to formalize,
study and simulate some of the models used and described in the lectures.
In particular, models of computational finance, evolutionary growth and
computable learning will be so formulated as to be amenable to numerical
studies quite immediately. Access to online financial data for simulation
and experimental purposes will be arranged for the duration of the
Workshop.
The preliminary program for the Tutorial Workshop is as follows:
Monday, 20 March, 2005
9.00 - 9.15
Professor Tom Boylan, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
Introduction and Welcome to the Workshop
9.15 – 9.30
Professor Vela Velupillai, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
A Brief Summary of the Aims of the Workshop
9.30 – 10.30
Professor Tom Boylan, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
Methods, Analogies, Modelling and Predictions in Economics
10.30 -11.00
Coffee Break
11.00 – 13.00
Professor Vela Velupillai
Introduction to Computable Economics
13.00 – 14.30
Lunch Break
14.30 – 16.30
Professor Duncan Foley
Introduction to the Complexity Vision in Economics
Tuesday, 21 March, 2005
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9.30 – 10.30
Professor Vela Velupillai, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
Computable and Constructive Analysis in Economic Theory
10.30 -11.00
Coffee Break
11.00 – 13.00
Professor Joe McCauley
Introduction to Computational Finance
13.00 – 14.30
Lunch Break
14.30 – 16.30
Professor Francisco Antonio Doria
Introduction to Computational Complexity Theory
Wednesday, 22 March, 2005
9.30 – 10.30
Dr Sheri Markose
On Hostile Agents, Red Queen Dynamics and Evolutionary Complexity
in Economics and Finance
10.30 -11.00
Coffee Break
11.00 – 13.00
Professor Joe McCauley
Dynamics of Financial Markets, Volatility and Option Pricing
13.00 – 14.30
Lunch Break
14.30 – 16.30
Dr Jorma Rissanen
Introduction to Stochastic Complexity Theory
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Thursday, 23 March, 2005
9.30 – 10.30
Professor Vela Velupillai, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
An Overview of Behavioural Economics with Special Reference to
Rationality and Learning
10.30 -11.00
Coffee Break
11.00 – 13.00
Professor Francisco Antonio Doria
Computing the Future: Introduction to Undecidability and Incompletenes
13.00 – 14.30
Lunch Break
14.30 – 16.30
Dr Jorma Rissanen
Learning, Estimation and Prediction
Friday, 24 March, 2005
9.30 – 10.30
Professor Vela Velupillai, Department of Economics, NUI Galway
‘Beware the Ides of March’: Uncomputability and Undecidability in
Economic Theory
10.30 -11.00
Coffee Break
11.00 – 13.00
Professor Duncan Foley
Complexity, Self-Organisation and Political Economy
13.00 – 14.30
Lunch Break
14.30 – 16.30
Professor Tom Boylan
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Reflections and Speculations
Recommended Texts for the Workshop
1. Dynamics of Markets by Joeseph L McCauley, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 2004-07-06
2. Computability, Complexity and Constructivity in Economic
Analysis, edited by K. Vela Velupillai, [To be published by
Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, March 2005]
3. Computable Economics by K Vela Velupillai, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 2000.
It is expected that the second of the above two books will be made
available to the participants about a week prior to the beginning of the
Workshop (free of charge). An updated and more pedagogically oriented
version of item 3, with the title, Introduction to Algorithmic Economics
is being prepared by Vela Velupillai. If it is ready, even in manuscript
form, before March, 2005, it will also be made available to the
participants.
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