Isolation and Aggregation in Economics

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular application of ceteris paribus analysis - isolation from "structural effects". This leads to an approach, called "closed aggregation", which was introduced by Kenneth May and is also implicit in Keynes' writings but has been neglected more recently. It is argued that macroeconomic models are more stable and more general than the corresponding micro models and that there is no simple analogy between them

Transforming the Simple Moving Average Forecasting Technique into a Judgmental Bootstrapping Approach

The simple moving average forecasting technique (SMAFT) uses a naïve arithmetic measurement for smoothing time-series data for various situations purposes, such as sales prediction. This paper attempts to rectify the contextual procedure of SMAFT by transforming the method into a judgmental bootstrapping approach, combining the statistical techniques of the X - chart (x-bar) and the Hurwicz\u27s Criterion. The proposed modeling approach generates a dual forecasting value, presented by the grand mean, x , of the x-bar chart and the expected weighted payoff of the Hurwicz\u27s Criterion, which is used to improve the accuracy of the final forecast. This model will serve the need for a cost effective technique to address routine forecasting, especially for companies with large numbers of items