Research for Computer Models

This paper derives the method for aggregating conditional absorbing Markov chains into a single chain that is representative of the total process and has the same state space as the conditional chains.

This paper estimates the value employees place on stable employment. Here the term 'stable employment' means a relatively low probability of temporary and/or permanent layoffs. This value is estimated by regressing individual wage rates on exogenous variables and proxy variables for unstable employment. The sign and size of the coefficients on these proxy variables in the wage equation measures the value of stable employment in terms of the hourly wage rate. The wage equation is estimated using the Michigan and Parnes survey data. The results indicate that the wage elasticity with respect to instability is .3. This means that if one industry is 50 percent more stable than another, then other things equal, the more stable industry would have a 15 percent lower wage rate.

This paper calculates the distribution of the number of survivors of a set number of attacks with given parameters, for various missile-allocation situations, and the expected number of missiles fired. The emphasis is on eliminating the complexity arising from a large number of missiles attacking simultaneously. Computer programs for these calculations are presented in Appendix A.

This paper discusses the trend among simulation designers toward the construction of models of the 'middle range' that are designed in an attempt to resolve the tension between the 'contextual particularity' of events and the apparent order and organization of events in the form of general laws and theory. This paper underscores this preference both in comparison to more abstract experiments designed to uncover general laws and 'real world' experiments designed to describe the uniqueness of particular events.