Motivation

Partial equilibrium (PE) models are simple and lightweight, but programming one can be complicated by the hierarchical nature of the linkages. This library proposes the use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to represent the model in an intuitive and object-oriented manner.

XML is designed to represent relational data. This works well for PE models characterized by layers of horizontal and vertical linkages. However, object-oriented design is not a principle concern of the XML specification, and PE models are easily imagined as the interaction between objects (e.g. markets, products). To align these two characteristics, this library relies on the .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) library which provides for the object-oriented navigation of complicated relational linkages.

The primary goal of this library is to help write code that mirrors the graphical representation of a model.