Pathways To Solutions Fixed Points And Equilibria

Nonlinear equations arise in essentially every branch of modern science, engineering, and mathematics. However, in only a very few special cases is it possible to obtain useful solutions to nonlinear equations via analytical calculations. As a result, many scientists resort to computational methods. This book contains the proceedings of the Joint AMS-SIAM Summer Seminar, ``Computational Solution of Nonlinear Systems of Equations,'' held in July 1988 at Colorado State University. The aim of the book is to give a wide-ranging survey of essentially all of the methods which comprise currently active areas of research in the computational solution of systems of nonlinear equations. A number of ``entry-level'' survey papers were solicited, and a series of test problems has been collected in an appendix. Most of the articles are accessible to students who have had a course in numerical analysis.

Computing Equilibria and Fixed Points is devoted to the computation of equilibria, fixed points and stationary points. This volume is written with three goals in mind: (i) To give a comprehensive introduction to fixed point methods and to the definition and construction of Gröbner bases; (ii) To discuss several interesting applications of these methods in the fields of general equilibrium theory, game theory, mathematical programming, algebra and symbolic computation; (iii) To introduce several advanced fixed point and stationary point theorems. These methods and topics should be of interest not only to economists and game theorists concerned with the computation and existence of equilibrium outcomes in economic models and cooperative and non-cooperative games, but also to applied mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers dealing with models of highly nonlinear systems of equations (or polynomial equations).

This book presents a systematic approach to problems in economic equilibrium based on fixed-point arguments and rigorous set-theoretical (axiomatic) methods. It describes the highest-level research on the classical theme, fixed points and economic equilibria, in the theory of mathematical economics, and also presents basic results in this area, especially in the general equilibrium theory and non-co-operative game theory. The arguments also contain distinguishable developments of the main theme in the homology theory for general topological spaces, in the model theory and mathematical logic, and in the methodology and philosophy of social sciences. It can thus serve as a graduate-level textbook on mathematical economics as well as an advanced monograph for students and researchers who are concerned about rigorous mathematical treatment in the social sciences.

The 9th Belgian-French-German Conference on Optimization has been held in Namur (Belgium) on September 7-11, 1998. This volume is a collection of papers presented at this Conference. Originally, this Conference was a French-German Conference but this year, in accordance with the organizers' wishes, a third country, Belgium, has joined the founding members of the Conference. Hence the name: Belgian French-German Conference on Optimization. Since the very beginning, the purpose of these Conferences has been to bring together researchers working in the area of Optimization and partic ularly to encourage young researchers to present their work. Most of the participants come from the organizing countries. However the general ten dancy is to invite outside researchers to attend the meeting. So this year, among the 101 participants at this Conference, twenty researchers came from other countries. The general theme of the Conference is everything that concerns the area of Optimization without specification of particular topics. So theoretical as pects of Optimization, in addition to applications and algorithms of Opti mization, will be developed. However, and this point was very important for the organizers, the Conference must retain its convivial character. No more than two parallel sessions are organized. This would allow useful contacts between researchers to be promoted. The editors express their sincere thanks to all those who took part in this Conference. Their invaluable discussions have made this volume possible.

This book develops the central aspect of fixed point theory – the topological fixed point index – to maximal generality, emphasizing correspondences and other aspects of the theory that are of special interest to economics. Numerous topological consequences are presented, along with important implications for dynamical systems. The book assumes the reader has no mathematical knowledge beyond that which is familiar to all theoretical economists. In addition to making the material available to a broad audience, avoiding algebraic topology results in more geometric and intuitive proofs. Graduate students and researchers in economics, and related fields in mathematics and computer science, will benefit from this book, both as a useful reference and as a well-written rigorous exposition of foundational mathematics. Numerous problems sketch key results from a wide variety of topics in theoretical economics, making the book an outstanding text for advanced graduate courses in economics and related disciplines.

This multi-authored volume presents selected papers from the Eighth Workshop on Dynamics and Control. Many of the papers represent significant advances in this area of research, and cover the development of control methods, including the control of dynamical systems subject to mixed constraints on both the control and state variables, and the development of a control design method for flexible manipulators with mismatched uncertainties. Advances in dynamic systems are presented, particularly in game-theoretic approaches and also the applications of dynamic systems methodology to social and environmental problems, for example, the concept of virtual biospheres in modeling climate change in terms of dynamical systems.

An overview of the dramatic reorganization in reaction to N. Karmakar’s seminal 1984 paper on algorithmic linear programming in the area of algorithmic differentiable optimization and equation-solving, or, more simply, algorithmic differentiable programming. Aimed at readers familiar with advanced calculus and numerical analysis.

This book contains essays in honour of Claus Weddepohl who, after 22 years, is retiring as professor of mathematical economics at the Department of Quantitative Economics of the University of Amsterdam. Claus Weddepohl may be viewed as th~ first Dutch mathematical economist in the general equi librium tradition of Arrow, Debreu and Hahn. The essays in this book are centered around the themes Equilibrium, Markets and Dynamics, that have been at the heart of Weddepohl's work on mathematical economics for more than three decades. The essays have been classified according to these three themes. Admittedly such a classification always is somewhat arbitrary, and most essays would in fact fit into two or even all three themes. The essays have been written by international as well as Dutch friends and colleagues including Weddepohl's former Ph. D. students. The book starts with a review of Claus Weddepohl's work by Roald Ramer, who has been working with him in Amsterdam for all those years. The review describes how Weddepohl became fascinated by general equilibrium theory in the early stages of his career, how he has been working on the theory of markets throughout his career, and how he turned to applications of nonlinear dynamics to price adjustment processes in a later stage of his career. The first part of the book, Equilibrium, collects essays with general equilib rium theory as the main theme.

About 60 scientists and students attended the 96' International Conference on Nonlinear Programming, which was held September 2-5 at Institute of Compu tational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing (ICMSEC), Chi nese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. 25 participants were from outside China and 35 from China. The conference was to celebrate the 60's birthday of Professor M.J.D. Powell (Fellow of Royal Society, University of Cambridge) for his many contributions to nonlinear optimization. On behalf of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, vice president Professor Zhi hong Xu attended the opening ceremony of the conference to express his warm welcome to all the participants. After the opening ceremony, Professor M.J.D. Powell gave the keynote lecture "The use of band matrices for second derivative approximations in trust region methods". 13 other invited lectures on recent advances of nonlinear programming were given during the four day meeting: "Primal-dual methods for nonconvex optimization" by M. H. Wright (SIAM President, Bell Labs), "Interior point trajectories in semidefinite programming" by D. Goldfarb (Columbia University, Editor-in-Chief for Series A of Mathe matical Programming), "An approach to derivative free optimization" by A.