Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract : Interlocal commodity flows are considered in terms of vector fields. Efficient transportation then gives rise to a problem in the calculus of variations; the flow functions solving this problem contain price distribution functions as parameters. With net production functions dependent on prices, the model describes the flow and prices in a competitive regional market economy. (Author)

The problem of controlling the rate of production of a single product can be stated in terms of servomechanism theory, and the well-developed methods of that theory employed to study the behavior of a control system. This is illustrated for a simple system, and a cost criterion is constructed for evaluating alternative decision rules or constructing an optimal rule. Laplace transform methods are introduced, and some of their elementary uses for studying the stability and steady-state behavior of systems are illustrated.