This book focuses on structural changes and economic modeling. It presents papers describing how to model structural changes, as well as those introducing improvements to the existing before-structural-changes models, making it easier to later on combine these models with techniques describing structural changes. The book also includes related theoretical developments and practical applications of the resulting techniques to economic problems. Most traditional mathematical models of economic processes describe how the corresponding quantities change with time. However, in addition to such relatively smooth numerical changes, economical phenomena often undergo more drastic structural change. Describing such structural changes is not easy, but it is vital if we want to have a more adequate description of economic phenomena – and thus, more accurate and more reliable predictions and a better understanding on how best to influence the economic situation.

New Perspectives on Structural Change is a comprehensive edited volume that outlines both the historical roots and state-of-the-art debates on the role of structural change in the process of economic development, including both orthodox and heterodox perspectives and contributions from prominent scholars in this field. The volume consists of four main sections. The first section covers the theoretical foundations of the structural change literature. The second section presents an empirical overview of the major trends of structural change, using up-to-date data sources and methods. The third section presents a broad ranging empirical analysis of the drivers of structural change. The fourth section examines how processes such as inclusive growth, poverty reduction, productive employment, the global income distribution, and environmental sustainability are affected by structural change, and how they can be influenced by policy.

Structural change is a fundamental concept in economic model building. Statistics and econometrics provide the tools for identification of change, for estimating the onset of a change, for assessing its extent and relevance. Statistics and econometrics also have de veloped models that are suitable for picturing the data-generating process in the presence of structural change by assimilating the changes or due to the robustness to its presence. Important subjects in this context are forecasting methods. The need for such methods became obvious when, as a consequence of the oil price shock, the results of empirical analyses suddenly seemed to be much less reliable than before. Nowadays, economists agree that models with fixed structure that picture reality over longer periods are illusions. An example for less dramatic causes than the oil price shock with similarly profound effects is economic growth and its impacts on the economic system. Indeed, economic growth was a motivating concept for this volume. In 1983, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxen burg/ Austria initiated an ambitious project on "Economic Growth and Structural Change".

In 1984, the University of Bonn (FRG) and the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg (Austria), created a joint research group to analyze the relationship between economic growth and structural change. The research team was to examine the commodity composition as well as the size and direction of commodity and credit flows among countries and regions. Krelle (1988) reports on the results of this "Bonn-IIASA" research project. At the same time, an informal IIASA Working Group was initiated to deal with prob lems of the statistical analysis of economic data in the context of structural change: What tools do we have to identify nonconstancy of model parameters? What type of models are particularly applicable to nonconstant structure? How is forecasting affected by the presence of nonconstant structure? What problems should be anticipated in applying these tools and models? Some 50 experts, mainly statisticians or econometricians from about 15 countries, came together in Lodz, Poland (May 1985); Berlin, GDR (June 1986); and Sulejov, Poland (September 1986) to present and discuss their findings. This volume contains a selected set of those conference contributions as well as several specially invited chapters.

This book grew out of a 'Doctorat D'Etat' thesis presented at the University of Dijon-Institut Mathematique Economiques (lME). It aims to show that quantity rationing theory provides the means of improving macroeconometric modelling in the study of struc tural changes. The empirical results presented in the last chapter (concerning Portuguese economy) and in the last Appendix (con cerning the French economy), although preliminary, suggested that the effort is rewarding and should be continued. My debts are many. An important part of the research work was accomplished during my visit to the Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (lNSEE, Paris), where I have beneficted from stimulating discussions (particularly with P. Villa) and infor matical support. I have also received comments and suggestions from R. Quandt, J.-J. Laffont, P. Kooiman and P.-Y. Henin. I am specially indebted to P. Balestra for encouraging and valuable discussions, particularly in the field of econometric methods. My thanks go also to an anonymous referee. His constructive criticism and suggestions resulted in a number of improvements to an earlier version of this book. I cannot forget my friend A. Costa from BP A (Porto) who has helped me in the preparation of this work. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife for her encouragement and patience throughout these years. Of course, I am the only one responsible for any remaining errors.

The book's comprehensive coverage on the application of econometric methods to empirical analysis of economic issues is impressive. It uncovers the missing link between textbooks on economic theory and econometrics and highlights the powerful connection between economic theory and empirical analysis perfectly through examples on rigorous experimental design. The use of data sets for estimation derived with the Monte Carlo method helps facilitate the understanding of the role of hypothesis testing applied to economic models. Topics covered in the book are: consumer behavior, producer behavior, market equilibrium, macroeconomic models, qualitative-response models, panel data analysis and time-series analysis. Key econometric models are introduced, specified, estimated and evaluated. The treatment on methods of estimation in econometrics and the discipline of hypothesis testing makes it a must-have for graduate students of economics and econometrics and aids their understanding on how to estimate economic models and evaluate the results in terms of policy implications.

This book describes the principles of integrated assessment models (IAM) for climate change economics and introduces various computable models for different development mechanisms under climate change governance. The authors present several new models they have constructed based on the RICE framework, specifically the MRICES((multi-factor RICE)) and EMRICES models, which incorporate global economic interactions into the RICE framework, and the CINCIA model, which describes technological advances and industrial structure evolution, introducing the mechanism of evolutionary economics. The models discussed in the book help governments and policy-makers tackle climate change and take positive measures on climate governance as well as promote economic and social development to narrow the gaps between countries.

Bringing together a collection of previously published work, this book provides a discussion of major considerations relating to the construction of econometric models that work well to explain economic phenomena, predict future outcomes and be useful for policy-making. Analytical relations between dynamic econometric structural models and empirical time series MVARMA, VAR, transfer function, and univariate ARIMA models are established with important application for model-checking and model construction. The theory and applications of these procedures to a variety of econometric modeling and forecasting problems as well as Bayesian and non-Bayesian testing, shrinkage estimation and forecasting procedures are also presented and applied. Finally, attention is focused on the effects of disaggregation on forecasting precision and the Marshallian Macroeconomic Model that features demand, supply and entry equations for major sectors of economies is analysed and described. This volume will prove invaluable to professionals, academics and students alike.

This book undertakes a theoretical and econometric analysis of intense economic growth in selected European countries during the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first. Focusing on the accelerated economic growth that occurred in Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey, this book investigates the determinants and consequences of this “miracle” growth and discusses them in context of growth and development processes observed in European market-type economies after the World War II. Using imperfect knowledge economics (IKE) as a theoretical framework to interpret the empirical results, this book provides a fresh theoretical perspective in comparison with current Neo-classical, Keynesian and institutional paradigms. With this systematic approach, the authors seek to provide a unified methodology for evaluating the phenomenon of intense economic growth that has heretofore been missing from the discipline. Combining diverse theoretical and methodological strategies to provide a holistic understanding of the historical process of economic change, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of economic growth, econometrics, political economy, and the new institutional economics as well as policymakers.