Taro's View

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Friday, August 01, 2008

When I was at Osaka University, my professor told me the reason why economists use unreal models as an explanation of reality.

He quoted from a great British economist of the 20th century,

A model which took account of all the variegation of reality would be of no more use than a map at the scale of one to one. Joan Robinson (1962)

Since then, I've tried to study the tools of dynamic optimization.

variegation: –noun
1. an act of variegating.
2. the state or condition of being variegated; varied coloration.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

David Cass Passed Away

(Picture from U of Penn, department of economics)

I didn't know that David Cass, well-known economist for "Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model", had recently passed away.

I told this model before as an optimal economic growth model, but it's a very casual explanation.

If you want to know about it more accurately, it would be much better for you to read David Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics, Chapter 2.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

How are you, mom?
I'm fine.

Sorry for my late email.

I am now being
allowed to have
a good experience
to stay in Germany
for one month.

I'm now at the town called Potsdam,
Germany, which is very familiar to
Japanese people because it was the place of
the Potsdam conference. As you know, it
asked Japan to surrender unconditionally around
60 years ago.

I was surprised that many Japanese people
live here and the food is really nice.

In our impression, the German food is
"potato and sausage" but has a lot of vegetable
and is not quite different from that of Japan
except bread.

However, the language is mainly German and
I have a little difficult life in town, but I may be
able to sympathize with the foreign people
staying in Japan. In Japan they cannot use
English and I am not sure that my English is
improving, either.

I am going to call you later.
Bye. Thank you, mom.

Sincerely yours,

Taro Okamoto

This post is the English version of the previous post translated by Taro.

拝啓、母上様

母上様、

太郎です。お元気ですか？
お変わりないでしょうか？

私は元気です。
久方ぶりのメールで恐縮です。

たった１ヶ月の短いドイツの滞在ですが、
貴重な経験をさせていただいていると思います。

ポツダムという街に滞在していますが、
日本人にとってポツダムという街
（日本の無条件降伏を求めるポツダム宣言が行われたという意味で）
は非常に縁の深い街であることはいうまでもありません。

意外にも日本人滞在者が多いことにも驚きましたが、
何よりも食べ物が想像以上に良いことが印象的です。

ポテト、ソーセージというイメージが強いですが、
野菜の多い食卓はパン食ということを除けば、
日本と大差はありません。

ただ言葉がドイツ語で、街中では不自由しますが、
日本での外国人滞在者に同情することができた
かもしれません。

日本ではまったく英語が通用しませんので。
まだ小生の英語力も信用できませんが。

また電話します。
それでは、また。

太郎

Walk at Potsdam (1)

Shall we go for a walk at Potsdam?

My fellow Japanese:
Recent Japanese are really poor and cannot afford to visit another country, but please don't worry! You don't have to pay the flight and spend much time to visit Germany.

See these pictures. Here you can feel as if you visited Potsdam.