| Abstrakt: |
The problems of planning for economic develop ment arise from the interplay of the political, social, and economic subsystems of a developing country. These problems are characterized by the uncer tainty necessarily inherent in any process of plan ning for the future — uncertainty arising both from the quantity and quality of available data and from the difficulties of forecasting how a large-scale system of complex interactive and feedback relation ships will respond to policy inputs. In this paper, generalized system simulation is offered as an ap proach to dealing with these problems. It is a flexi ble, iterative, problem-investigating process that includes problem formulation, mathematical modeling, model testing and refinement, and appli cation of the model to solve problems — all in close consultation with decision-makers. As an illus tration, an overview will be given of a policy- oriented system simulation model of the Nigerian economy. The model consists of two detailed re gional agricultural submodels, an aggregated na tional nonagricultural submodel, and components which model Nigeria's population and the inter- regional trade in food. Finally, I shall outline how the generalized system simulation approach could be implemented within the development-planning and policy-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
