Acquisition and Development of a New Computing Environment for the Department of Economics

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。市村英彦、约翰·卡格尔和让-弗朗索瓦·理查德将获得仪器设备，以升级匹兹堡大学经济系陈旧的计算机设备。该合同将允许采购和开发新的、更有效的系统。该系将获得最先进的多cpu服务器，将升级研究生PC实验室，并最终升级该系的实验实验室。为了更有效地使用该系统，该小组将制定一个调度流程。他们将采用并修改现成的排队系统来调度工作负载，即使在实验室专门用于数据收集的时间，批处理作业也可以在空闲的机器上执行。为了实现这一目标，每台计算机必须在统一的环境中工作，研究人员将开发一个集成系统来实现这一目标。他们将以可广泛分发的有效的一揽子形式提供结果。升级后的实验室将立即对追求各种研究目标有用。三个项目涉及重要的数值发展，其重要性超越经济学：高维数值积分，非参数方法和模拟技术。另一个是动态非线性宏观经济模型的统计分析。三个申请项目涉及当前基本的社会经济政策问题：就业培训方案、保健改革和抵押贷款模式。这些实验室将被学生广泛使用，因此具有重要的教育和研究功能。

With National Science Foundation support Drs. Hidehiko Ichimura, John Kagel and Jean-Francois Richard will acquire instrumentation to upgrade the antiquated computer facilities at the department of economics at the University of Pittsburgh. This award will permit both acquisition and development of the new, more efficient system. The department will acquire a state of the art multi-CPU server, will upgrade the graduate student PC laboratory and finally upgrade the department's experimental laboratory. To use the system more effectively, the group will develop a scheduling process. They will adopt and modify an off the shelf queuing system to schedule workloads in a way that batch jobs can be executed on idle machines even during times at which the laboratory is dedicated to data gathering. To accomplish this each computer must work in a uniform environment and the researchers will develop an integrated system to achieve this goal. They will make the result available in an effective drop-in package form which can be widely distributed. The upgraded laboratory will be immediately useful to pursue a variety of research goals. Three projects relate to major numerical developments whose importance transcend economics: high-dimensional numerical integration, nonparametric methods and simulation techniques. Another deals with the statistical analysis of dynamic nonlinear macroeconomic models. Three applied projects address fundamental current socio-economic policy issues: job training programs, health-care reforms and mortgage lending patterns. The laboratories will be extensively used by students and thus serve an important educational as well as research function.