Nobel laureate in Economics Robert Lucas once described economics in terms that would have been familiar to computer scientists:

“This is what I mean by the ‘mechanics’ of economic development – the construction of a mechanical, artificial world, populated by the interacting robots that economics typically studies, that is capable of exhibiting behavior the gross features of which resemble those of the actual world.” – Robert Lucas, Jr., “On the Mechanics of Economic Development”. Journal of Monetary Economics. 1988.

The slide presentation below attempts to survey the use of optimal control theory – a staple in dynamic optimization problems – in economics, one in which markets are populated by hyper-rational, machine-like beings with fixed preferences and ability to calculate in infinite time.

The presentation is also available here: http://www.slideshare.net/jmmiraflor/optimal-control-in-agentbased-economics-a-survey