The evolution of socio-economic modeling in Canada

Abstract

For the past 15 years the authors have been associated with a research program concerned with the development of structural economic models that had their origins in the input-output models of Leontief. This program has produced a set of conceptual tools embracing a new approach to socio-economic modeling which we term the “design approach.” This approach draws on general systems theory and control theory in application to large social systems. Also emerging from this program as its test prototype is a particular set of models designed for society wide resource analysis and a set of software tools within which design approach models can be designed, implemented, and operated. The design approach provides a new method of assessing technologies in regard to their overall socio-economic resource impact. The objective of this paper is to describe the unique institutional setting and the particular issues which provided the setting and the motivation for embarking on a large scale modeling program. The paper is organized chronologically, describing first of all the evolution of the program approach, the software tools, the Socio-Economic Resource Framework (SERF), which is the prototype set of models that have been implemented, and some results obtained from it.