Late notice: Minsky seminar at Kingston tomorrow

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This is late notice for a sem­i­nar being held tomor­row (Wednes­day 12^th) from 6–8pm at Kingston Uni­ver­si­ty’s Pen­rhyn Road cam­pus in room JG4003 (4th floor of the main teach­ing build­ing at Kingston) to intro­duce the sys­tem dynam­ics mod­el­ing pro­gram Min­sky.

Sys­tem dynam­ics pro­grams allow dynam­ic mod­els to be con­struct­ed using flow­charts to define and sim­u­late the equa­tions of a sys­tem. Min­sky adds some­thing no oth­er pro­gram has: a sim­ple means of mod­el­ing finan­cial flows.

This sem­i­nar will intro­duce the con­cept of sys­tem dynam­ics in gen­er­al, and also the unique fea­ture of Min­sky: the use of a dou­ble-entry book­keep­ing tool called a “God­ley Table” to mod­el finan­cial flows, which are impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult to mod­el in the stan­dard flow­chart par­a­digm employed by all oth­er sys­tem dynam­ics pro­grams.

This is a hands-on sem­i­nar: you will install Min­sky on a PC in this com­put­er lab (or on your own lap­top if you bring that and have inter­net access), then con­struct a few sim­ple mod­els, and final­ly devel­op a mod­el of the Neo­clas­si­cal vision of mon­ey known as Loan­able Funds. You will then very quick­ly alter this to a mod­el of Endoge­nous Mon­ey.

The sem­i­nar is free, as indeed is Min­sky itself since it is an Open Source pro­gram. If you wish, you can down­load it from https://sourceforge.net/p/minsky/.

I look for­ward to see­ing you at the sem­i­nar. If you wish to attend, please con­tact Julian Wells (Julian.Wells AT Kingston DOT ac DOT uk) by 4m today–as I said, it is late notice!