Why compute? Computing helps to extend the range of possible models considered beyond those having simple analytical solutions. While analytical analysis provides important intuition to explain observable phenomena it often requires assumptions that are too strong and it only allows highly simplified treatment of quantitative data available.

The Enterprise Initiative's researchers know from data that heterogeneity among households, villages and regions is one of the most important factors to consider in economic analysis. Such deviations from representative firms, households or other economic agents lead to rapidly increasing complexities in the structure of economic models that can challenge high-performance computing tools available to the edge of their capabilities.

The Initiative seeks to use a variety of models to take a closer look at mechanism design and incentive problems, as well as others exploring economic growth. For a more in-depth look at the application of computation, please explore the pages below.

Resources

To access a sampling of the Initiative's computational tools, as well as those from outside resources, please visit http://enterpriseinitiative.org/Arete/ComputationLecture.aspx.

Selected Readings

For a brief list of readings discussing the role of computational tools in enterprise research, please visit http://enterpriseinitiative.org/Arete/ComputationReading.aspx.