3,673 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
A stable calculation need not describe a stable economy—or rest on accurate observations. In this jointly authored conference-paper abstract, Oskar Morgenstern and Max A. Woodbury examine how errors in input-output coefficients propagate into matrix inverses. Two 18-by-18 matrices, altered in only 42 entries by at most two per cent, yield remarkably similar inverses. Yet the authors question whether this reassuring result reflects economic interdependence or merely the matrices’ proximity to the identity: better data might reveal connections currently recorded as zeros. Woodbury’s mathematical results add bounds on error transmission and an exact inverse-update formula for a change in one row. The abstract offers a compact encounter with the distinction between computational robustness and empirical adequacy in economic modelling.
The stability of inverses must not be interpreted as proving stability of the economy. It is merely an indication how, and to what extent, errors in the given matrix carry over into its inverse.