Econintersect: Steve Keen has provided an update on the development status of the Minsky modeling program that is being completed with funds being raised through his campaign at Kickstarter. This has been discussed by Global Economic Interesection articles here, here and here.
The Minsky project is working to implement a macro economic modeling program that works without common limiting assumptions of economic equilibrium, the use of represenative agents and the consideration of money and credit only as “lubricants” rather than active elements in the model.
Here is a summary provided by Steve Keen to Econintersect 10 march 2013:
That [funding to date] will add another 600 or so hours of programming by Russell and Nathan. It will keep the momentum going and give me time to arrange other funding sources later in 2013; but it would be so much better to double what we’ve achieved here on Kickstarter and get enough to keep the coding going for a year or more.
The next major stage in development will be combining the two code bases we currently have–Russell’s code in C++ and Tcl/Tk and Nathan’s in Javascript and PHP–into one code base where C++ handles the back end work, Javascript handles user interface processing, and PHP handles the multi-user database for collaboration, etc. This is going on right now and, if it works (there are a few gambles in terms of the capabilities of Javascript, browser window graphics, etc.), the next release will have this combined codebase.
The motivation of course is to get the best “bang for our buck” that we can from the funding. With one code base, the work that Russell and Nathan are doing is complementary, rather than involving duplication with one code base for the executable product and another for the web-based one.
Steve Keen will appear this week on the Max Kaiser Report and on the Yahoo Finance Daily Ticker (on Monday 11 March 2013). He will be talking about current economic problems and will certainly weave the Minsky story into the mix.
Below is a recent update of some of the advances being made with Minsky development. Click on image to watch the five minute video at Kickstarter.
Go to Minsky page at Kickstarter to pledge support for this project. Minsky has just surpassed $60,000 toward the stretch goal of $100,000 with only six days to go in the current campaign.