GIUSEPPE SCIFO

Modelli e giochi di simulazione per la politica economica.

Un esperimento all'Università di Pavia

N. 145

 

Summary — Science reasons through models and this happens also in the economic field. The various theories on the possibilities, limits, realization of the economic policy can be discussed as contrast among models of interpretation of the reality.

Among the scientific models those of simulation have come into evidence, not so much as instruments for "discovering the truth", but as instruments for "exploring the world of the possible". They have proved to ho powerful didactic instruments inasmuch as they make possible a rapid and involving transference of complex systems of relations not all of the same "dimension", as it happens in the economic policy.

The didactic experimenting with the Polecon 4 model of simulation carried out at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Pavia, during the academic years 1986/87 and 1987/88, has given satisfactory results. The students transformed into "Ministers" and administered the nation through a legislature, without cutting a poor figure in respect of the colleagues of "real" governments.