SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL
VOLUME 33 • NUMBERS 3/4 • DECEMBER 1979 605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016
A Decade of Research by Project Link by Bert C. Hickman and Lawrence R. Klein*
Genesis and purpose Project LINK is a cooperative, international research of the forecast horizon. Methodological contributions activity aimed at increasing basic understanding of have been made to the theory of trade linkages and the nature and strength of economic relationships world trade models, to the solution algorithms for that bind individual countries into a world economy large systems of linked models, to the integration of and serve to transmit both stabilizing and destabiliz- national and commodity models, and to the incoring disturbances across national boundaries. Struc- poration of exchange-rate determination and capital tural econometric models of the various countries and flows into multinational models. regions included in the system are linked through a The methodological basis of the project is the idea central world trade matrix of commodity flows and of integrating independently-developed national prices and of exchange rates and capital flows. models into a world system. Early in 1968, the ComThe LINK system is global in scope and virtually mittee on Economic Stability and Growth concluded complete in its geographical coverage. From its in- that the flourishing state of macroeconometric modception, it has been used for ex-ante forecasts of both eling at home and abroad provided the necessary the level and composition of world production and foundation for such a program. Its feasibility was trade and of inflation and unemployment rates. examined at a planning session held at Stanford U niNumerous applications have also been made of inter- versity under the auspices of the committee on July national multipliers and of policy simulations and scenarios of the effects of international disturbances. Over the decade of its existence, the project has expanded substantially in the degree of country coverage, the scope of linkage mechanisms, and the length CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE 49
* The authors are, respectively, professor of economics at Stanford University and Benjamin Franklin professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. They have served as members of the Council's Committee on Economic Stability and Growth since its appointment in 1959; the committee has been chaired by Mr. Hickman since 1962. The other members of the committee, which sponsors Project LINK, are: Irma Adelman, University of California, Berkeley; Rudiger Dornbusch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Otto Eckstein, Harvard University; Stephen M. Goldfeld, Princeton University; Franco Modigliani, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Geoffrey H. Moore, Rutgers University, Newark; William D. Nordhaus, Yale University; and Arthur M. Okun, Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C.).
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A Decade of Research by Project LINK-Bert C. Hickman and Lawrmce R. Klein The Accident at Three Mile Island: Social Science Perspectives-C. P. Wolf Council Symposium on Individual and Social Change Pendleton Herring Receives the Merriam Award Current Activi ties at the Council -The representation of cultural knowledge -Institute on life-span development -Law and social structure in the !'lear and Middle East -Parenting behavior -Comparative stratification research -Early socialization in Japan and the United States -Staff appointment: Rona ld J. Peleck Recent Council Publications
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