An Unexpected Application

But even though the allocation of resources is of interest primarily as a social problem, there are other applications that may be more important in technology as time goes on. Neoclassical economics has become "a new [computer] programming technology, according to Bernardo Huberman and Tad Hogg.

In "Distributed Computation as an Economic System," (Journal of Economic Perspectives, v. 9, no. 1, Winter 1995, pp. 141-152), they write "it may surprise even professional economists to learn that economics is of help in allocating computational resources to programs that run in these systems. ... The reason is that computer networks can be regarded as a community of concurrent processes, [and] face the same issues as people in a market. ... Some of the best-known programs already using these ideas include computational resource allocation and thermal markets for controlling building environments, which have shown increased performance when compared to the traditional operating systems."

As grandmother told me, nothing you learn is ever wasted and you never know when it will come in handy.

Moving On