QUANTITATIVE SUPPLY AND DEMAND MODEL BASED ON INFINITE SPREADSHEET

(Patent No. 6,078,901, Issued June 20, 2000)

Hugh Ching, PO Box 461, Berkeley, CA 94701, USA

Calculating devices for non-arbitrary price determination and rational decision making. The historical problem of value has been solved in this invention. The solution represents the first major breakthrough in social science. Value is defined as the sum total of all the future benefits and losses. An infinite spreadsheet establishes a deterministic relationship-described by an equal number of equations and unknowns-between the price and all the factors affecting the price in an expected time space extending from now to the infinite future. The infinite spreadsheet expands the current finite spreadsheet to infinity. It does not assume a resale price in the determination of the price. The current finite spreadsheet for planning and decision making should not be allowed because it hides material information, namely, the future beyond the finite time. The scientific method based on empirical verification is not always applicable in social science In particular, the solution to price cannot be empirically verified because deterministic sets of data can never be collected when the infinite future, which will never arrive, is involved. In order to carry the calculation to infinity, the inputs are expressed as approximate time-invariant variables. Since the present price depends on the future price, the calculation is done in a time-reversed fashion. The law of supply and demand, or the general economic equilibrium analysis, emphasizes the spatial dependence of the price and has neglected the importance of the temporal consideration, which is investigated in detail in the infinite spreadsheet. A quantitative supply and demand model for multiple commodities with similar functionality and with a uniform price can be constructed by summing over the quantities whose various prices are determined individually by the infinite spreadsheet. In turn, the quantitative model can be used to obtain the inputs for the infinite spreadsheet, with which it forms a new quantitative foundation for economics and ushers in a new age of social science.