WIP Overview model structures of Khalid Saeed's 2014 WPI paper Jay Forrester’s Disruptive Models of Economic Behavior  See also General SD and Macroeconomics CLDs IM-168865

Simulation of Goodwin01 Minsky Model CLD in IM-172002 Compare with Part3 slide 3 of presentation in patreon. See extension Goodwin02 at IM-172145

Challenge p.212 Business Dynamics, Sterman

Causal loop diagram capturing the interactions, trade-offs, and synergies between agriculture (SDG 2), water availability (SDG 6), economic growth (SDG 8), and life on land (SDG 15). Positive feedback linkages are shown as a positive sign (+), whereas negative feedback linkages are shown with a negative sign (−). The purple arrows indicate the enviro-biophysical linkages. The green arrows indicate the socio-economic linkages. The SDG icons are courtesy of the UN SDG communications material. 

Reference - Bandari, Reihaneh, et al. "Participatory Modeling for Analyzing Interactions Between High‐Priority Sustainable Development Goals to Promote Local Sustainability." Earth's Future 11.12 (2023): e2023EF003948.

Adam Smith's The Invisible Hand: The Feedback Structure of Markets. From Sterman JD Business Dynamics p170 Fig 5-26. A price-mediated resource allocation system..

A simple model of economic growth where a government taxes the economy, and spends it on capital and revenue goods.

Goodwin business cycle model, modified from Keen and Blatt

WIP of several books of Karl Polanyi's thoughts and papers around social science economic history and capitalism. . See also Summary of the Great Transformation IM-10640

WIP of Rammelt's 2019 System Dynamics Review Article which has STELLA and Minsky software versions as supplements. Compare with the older IM-2011 version

To maintain economic wealth (roads, hospitals, power lines, etc.) power needs to be consumed. The same applies to economic activity, since any activity requires the consumption of energy. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the burning of fossil fuels was responsible for 79 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. So whilst economic activity takes place fossil fuels will be burned and CO2 emissions are unavoidable - unless we use exclusively renewable energy resources, which is not likely to occur very soon. However, the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will have negative consequences, such droughts, floods, crop failures, etc. These effects represent limits to economic growth. The CLD illustrates some of the more prominent negative feedback loops that act as a break on economic growth and wealth.  As the negative feedback loops (B1-B4) get stronger, an interesting question is, 'will a sharp reduction in economic wealth and unavoidable recession lead to wide-spread food riots and disturbances?'

HANDY Model of Societal Collapse from Ecological Economics Paper 

The statement that there can be no economic activity without  energy and that fossil fuels are finite contrasts with the fact that money is not finite and can be created by governments via their central banks at zero marginal cost whenever needed.

An important fact about COAL, GAS and OIL (especially when produced via fracking) is that their net energy ratios are falling rapidly. In other words the energy needed to extract a given quantity of fossil fuels is constantly increasing. The falling ratio 'EROI' (Energy Return on Energy Invested ) provides yet another warning that we can no longer rely on fossil fuels to power our economies. In 1940 it took the energy of only one barrel of oil to extract 100. Today the energy of 1 barrel of oil will yield only 15. We cannot wait until the ratio falls to 1/1 before we invest seriously in alternative sources of energy, because by then industrial society as we know it doday will have ceased to exist. An EROI of 1:1 means that it takes the energy of one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil - oil production would simply stop! 

The World3 model is a detailed simulation of human population growth from 1900 into the future. It includes many environmental and demographic factors.

Use the sliders to experiment with the initial amount of non-renewable resources to see how these affect the simulation. Does increasing the amount of non-renewable resources (which could occur through the development of better exploration technologies) improve our future? Also, experiment with the start date of a more environmentally focused policy.

Butterfly Effect
Sensitivity To Initial Conditions
(sensitive dependence on initial conditions)
Navier Stokes Equations
Lorenz Attractor
Chaos Theory, Disorder and Entropy



If M is the state space for the map , then  displays sensitive dependence to initial conditions if for any x in M and any δ > 0, there are y in M, with  such that

Clone of Wagdy Samir Macroeconomics work in progress IM-901 Additions and deletions based on Robert Skidelsky's description of Keynes general THeory from his Biography Vol2 p 549 -571

Circular equations WIP for Runy.

IM-168155 Summary of Ch 27 of Mitchell Wray and Watts Textbook see IM-164967 for book overview with simplified Mike Radzicki's 2003 Evolutionary Economics history article added

Causal loop representations of macroeconomics taken from the System Dynamics literature contrasted with Forrester's main analysis of social and business organization layers See also Saeed's Forrester Economics IM-183285

How education causes the gap between socio-economic status?

ECONOMIC GROWTH feeds on itself, provided the growth engine is fed with materials and finance. In this highly simplified representation  some of the factors that influence economic growth are show in the incircled green fields. Governments can influence economic growth positively via investments  and payouts. The most obvious tool which governments can use to slow an overheated economy is taxation.