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The generative mechanisms of economic processes. (Mecanisme generative ale proceselor economice). (Romanian. English summary) Zbl 0535.90002
Seria Matematici Moderne Aplicate. Bucureşti: Editura Tehnicǎ. 248 p. Lei 9.00 (1981).
Table of contents: Preface (by S. Marcus), 1. General remarks on the modelling of economic processes by means of formal language theory; 2. Preliminary notions of formal language theory; 3. Problems of paths in graphs; 4. Action systems with economic applications; 5. The simulation of a queueing process; 6. The influence of the working time interval on the linguistic model complexity; conclusion; bibliography.
In this book the author ingeniously introduces the concepts of generative mechanisms of economic processes in the sense of constructing a grammar- automaton associated to a given economic process, $$\Sigma$$, such that the process’ evolution can be simulated by this grammar-automaton. Of practical interest is the fact that the generative mechanisms of economic processes, as defined by the author, are sufficiently general to include the solution of a variant of the travelling salesman problem with time restrictions (a computer program, called REPIGAL, is obtained); Zilinskaya’s problem, problems of paths in graphs, problems of aggregation and loss of information in hierarchical systems and others. Each of the later chapters includes references to articles at an appropriate level. The book is remarkable for the illustrative examples, for its research area and for further investigations. From a pedagogical point of view I would recommend this book as an ideal introduction to economic modelling. An extensive bibliography is provided.
Reviewer: P.Stavre

##### MSC:
 91B62 Economic growth models 90-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to operations research and mathematical programming 68Q45 Formal languages and automata 90C35 Programming involving graphs or networks 90B99 Operations research and management science 91B06 Decision theory 90C10 Integer programming