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59-466: The 50 State quarters (authorized by Pub. L.   105–124 (text) (PDF) , 111  Stat.   2534 , enacted December 1, 1997 ) was a series of circulating commemorative quarters released by the United States Mint . Minted from 1999 through 2008, they featured unique designs for each of the 50 US states on the reverse . The 50 State Quarters Program was started to support

118-497: A paradigm of econometric study. Simplification is particularly important for economics given the enormous complexity of economic processes. This complexity can be attributed to the diversity of factors that determine economic activity; these factors include: individual and cooperative decision processes, resource limitations, environmental and geographical constraints, institutional and legal requirements and purely random fluctuations. Economists therefore must make

177-673: A slip law and in the United States Statutes at Large after receiving the act. Thereafter, the changes are published in the United States Code . Through the process of judicial review , an act of Congress that violates the Constitution may be declared unconstitutional by the courts. A judicial declaration that an act of Congress is unconstitutional does not remove the act from the Statutes at Large or

236-479: A 3% change in GDP after one year, and one gave almost no change, with the rest spread between. Partly as a result of such experiments, modern central bankers no longer have as much confidence that it is possible to 'fine-tune' the economy as they had in the 1960s and early 1970s. Modern policy makers tend to use a less activist approach, explicitly because they lack confidence that their models will actually predict where

295-502: A Leontiev model, see the Phillips reference below. All through the 18th century (that is, well before the founding of modern political economy, conventionally marked by Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations ), simple probabilistic models were used to understand the economics of insurance . This was a natural extrapolation of the theory of gambling , and played an important role both in the development of probability theory itself and in

354-597: A clear basis for soundness, namely the validity of the supporting model. Economic models in current use do not pretend to be theories of everything economic ; any such pretensions would immediately be thwarted by computational infeasibility and the incompleteness or lack of theories for various types of economic behavior. Therefore, conclusions drawn from models will be approximate representations of economic facts. However, properly constructed models can remove extraneous information and isolate useful approximations of key relationships. In this way more can be understood about

413-633: A fundamental limit to their predictive powers: chaos . Although the modern mathematical work on chaotic systems began in the 1970s the danger of chaos had been identified and defined in Econometrica as early as 1958: It is straightforward to design economic models susceptible to butterfly effects of initial-condition sensitivity. However, the econometric research program to identify which variables are chaotic (if any) has largely concluded that aggregate macroeconomic variables probably do not behave chaotically. This would mean that refinements to

472-476: A model of behavior, so that an economist can differentiate between changes in relative prices and changes in price that are to be attributed to inflation. In addition to their professional academic interest, uses of models include: A model establishes an argumentative framework for applying logic and mathematics that can be independently discussed and tested and that can be applied in various instances. Policies and arguments that rely on economic models have

531-561: A more practical level, quantitative modelling is applied to many areas of economics and several methodologies have evolved more or less independently of each other. As a result, no overall model taxonomy is naturally available. We can nonetheless provide a few examples that illustrate some particularly relevant points of model construction. Most economic models rest on a number of assumptions that are not entirely realistic. For example, agents are often assumed to have perfect information, and markets are often assumed to clear without friction. Or,

590-556: A new generation of coin collectors , and it became the most successful numismatic program in US history, with roughly half of the US population collecting the coins, either in a casual manner or as a serious pursuit. The US federal government so far has made additional profits of $ 3 billion from collectors taking the coins out of circulation . In 2009, the US Mint began issuing quarters under

649-572: A range of $ 2.6 billion to $ 5.1 billion. (At the end of the program, the Mint estimated the actual increase in seigniorage to be $ 3 billion.) The Mint also estimated the program would earn $ 110 million in additional numismatic profits. (The final, post-program estimate was $ 136.2 million.) The Mint used these estimates to support the proposed program, and the legislation enacting the 50 States Quarters program cited these estimates. Act of Congress#Public law, private law, designation An act of Congress

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708-407: A reasoned choice of which variables and which relationships between these variables are relevant and which ways of analyzing and presenting this information are useful. Selection is important because the nature of an economic model will often determine what facts will be looked at and how they will be compiled. For example, inflation is a general economic concept, but to measure inflation requires

767-466: A smaller leaf, others feature a small leaf pointing upwards, and still others have the leaf bending down. A set of all three quarters sold on eBay in February 2005 for $ 300 and initially saw significant increases, such as $ 1500 for individual coins, but as of February 2020 PCGS lists the value of MS-62 specimens from $ 92 to $ 130 each. Another die cast error ran with the first Delaware quarters. Being

826-501: A solution of the paradoxical Saint Petersburg problem . All of these developments were summarized by Laplace in his Analytical Theory of Probabilities (1812). Thus, by the time David Ricardo came along he had a well-established mathematical basis to draw from. In the late 1980s, the Brookings Institution compared 12 leading macroeconomic models available at the time. They compared the models' predictions for how

885-538: A substantial role and considerable discretion in determining the design that would represent their state. The majority of states followed a process by which the governor solicited the state's citizens to submit design concepts and appointed an advisory group to oversee the process. Governors submitted three to five finalist design concepts to the Secretary of the Treasury for approval. Approved designs were returned to

944-563: Is a statute enacted by the United States Congress . Acts may apply only to individual entities (called private laws ), or to the general public ( public laws ). For a bill to become an act, the text must pass through both houses with a majority, then be either signed into law by the president of the United States , be left unsigned for ten days (excluding Sundays) while Congress remains in session, or, if vetoed by

1003-425: Is known as a " mule ". As of August 2019, only 19 of these specimens , produced on dollar planchets, are known to have escaped from the Mint. A 2005 Minnesota double die quarter, as well as a 2005 Minnesota quarter with extra trees (another die error), have both triggered numismatic interest. An unusual die break on some 2005 Kansas quarters created a humpback bison. Relatively more common are Kansas quarters bearing

1062-580: Is made by the third method, the presiding officer of the house that last reconsidered the act promulgates it. Under the United States Constitution , if the president does not return a bill or resolution to Congress with objections before the time limit expires, then the bill automatically becomes an act; however, if the Congress is adjourned at the end of this period, then the bill dies and cannot be reconsidered (see pocket veto ). If

1121-410: Is sometimes used in informal speech to indicate something for which getting permission is burdensome. For example, "It takes an act of Congress to get a building permit in this town." An act adopted by simple majorities in both houses of Congress is promulgated , or given the force of law, in one of the following ways: The president promulgates acts of Congress made by the first two methods. If an act

1180-491: Is that the market's invisible hand guides an economy to prosperity more efficiently than central planning using an economic model. One reason, emphasized by Friedrich Hayek , is the claim that many of the true forces shaping the economy can never be captured in a single plan. This is an argument that cannot be made through a conventional (mathematical) economic model because it says that there are critical systemic-elements that will always be omitted from any top-down analysis of

1239-421: Is worth only a fraction as much. The silver proof sets of later years, while having some intrinsic and collector worth, are also priced far lower. The public is cautioned to research prices before buying advertised state quarter year or proof sets. In general, the program increased interest in quarter and general coin collecting. Large numbers of ads, quarter products and quarter information were available during

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1298-470: The nation's coinage . Castle's initial caution was resolved when Diehl suggested the coins be issued in the order the states entered the Union or ratified the Constitution . Delaware, Castle's home state, was the first state to ratify the Constitution, and would thus get to be the first state to have its quarter released. Castle subsequently held hearings and filed legislation to authorize the program. Despite

1357-489: The 125th anniversary of the country's Confederation with a series of commemorative 25-cent pieces representing each of its 12 (at the time) provinces and territories. The Canada 125 program sparked a revival of interest in coin collecting among Canadians, which led American numismatists to advocate for the United States Mint to create a similar series of coins representing U.S. states. In 1992, Congress passed

1416-630: The 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games Commemorative Coin Act. In addition to authorizing a series of commemorative coins marking the 1996 Summer Olympics , the law also established the Citizens Commemorative Coin Advisory Committee (CCCAC) to consider ideas for future releases. After Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen appointed the committee in December 1993, several of its members, led by David Ganz, urged

1475-663: The 2009 District of Columbia and US Territories Program . The Territories Quarter Program was authorized by the passage of a newer legislative act, H.R. 2764 . This program features the District of Columbia , Puerto Rico , American Samoa , Guam , the United States Virgin Islands , and the Northern Mariana Islands . The 50 State Quarters program was initially inspired by a 1992 Royal Canadian Mint program, " Canada 125 ", marking

1534-529: The 50 States Commemorative Coin Program Act, which instructed the creation of the 50 State quarters series to "honor the unique Federal Republic of 50 States that comprise the United States; and to promote the diffusion of knowledge among the youth of the United States about the individual states, their history and geography, and the rich diversity of the national heritage...", and to encourage "young people and their families to collect memorable tokens of all of

1593-546: The Mint established the Artistic Infusion Program in 2003, hiring more professional artists and engravers to create better-looking designs for all commemorative coins. The 50 State Quarters Program was the most popular commemorative coin program in United States history ; the United States Mint has estimated that 147 million Americans have collected state quarters and 3.5 million participated in

1652-594: The Rocky Mountains. The Mint's conversion of each state's proposal into the final design that was used on the quarter also drew criticism for being overly simplified or poorly rendered. Paul Jackson, whose design was chosen for the Missouri quarter and then pared down by the Mint, led a series of protests which included placing stickers with Jackson's original design on the reverses of 250,000 quarters and distributing them nationwide. In response to these criticisms,

1711-658: The States for the face value of the coins." While mintage totals of the various designs vary widely—Virginia quarters are almost 20 times as abundant as the Northern Marianas quarters—none of the regular circulating issues are rare enough to become a valuable investment. There was, however, a measure of collector interest over die errors in the Wisconsin quarter. Some designs from the Denver mint feature corn without

1770-518: The Treasury Department continued to oppose the program and declined to proceed with it without a congressional mandate to do so. In 1997, Congress issued that mandate in the form of S. 1228 , the 50 States Commemorative Coin Program Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 1, 1997. The 50 State quarters were released by the United States Mint every ten weeks, or five each year. They were released in

1829-605: The Treasury Secretary. The media and public attention surrounding this process and the release of each state's quarter was intense and produced significant publicity for the program. In several cases, the process of creating and finalizing a design caused controversy in the represented state, with people and groups expressing disappointment that the design did not properly reflect their state. There were disputes over which state could lay claim to certain design elements that appeared in other states, such as an ear of corn or

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1888-420: The Treasury's support, but Treasury officials found the projections to lack credibility (at the program's conclusion, the Mint estimated the program had earned $ 3 billion in additional seignorage and $ 136.2 million in additional numismatic profits). Diehl worked with Castle behind the scenes to move legislation forward despite the Treasury's opposition to the program. However, the Treasury suggested to Castle that

1947-477: The United States Code; rather, it prevents the act from being enforced. However, the act as published in annotated codes and legal databases is marked with annotations indicating that it is no longer good law. Economic model In general terms, economic models have two functions: first as a simplification of and abstraction from observed data, and second as a means of selection of data based on

2006-634: The committee to endorse a state quarters program. Initially, Ganz found support from only Charles Atherton, from the Federal Commission on Fine Arts, and Dan Hoffman, a young numismatist from South Carolina who also served on the CCCAC. However, by 1995, the CCCAC finally endorsed the idea. The committee then sought the support of Representative Michael Castle ( R - Delaware ), chairman of the House Banking subcommittee with jurisdiction over

2065-418: The consulting firm Coopers and Lybrand to conduct the study in 1997, which confirmed the Mint's demand, seignorage, and numismatic profit projections for the program. Among other conclusions, the study found that 98 million Americans were likely to save one or more full sets of the quarters (at the program's conclusion, the Mint estimated that 147 million Americans collected the 50 state quarters). Nevertheless,

2124-531: The department should conduct a study to determine the feasibility of the program. With Diehl's advice, Castle accepted the Treasury's offer, and the agreement was codified in the United States Commemorative Coin Act of 1996 . The act also authorized the Secretary to proceed with the 50 States Quarters Program without further congressional action if the results of the feasibility study were favorable. The Treasury Department engaged

2183-629: The development of actuarial science . Many of the giants of 18th century mathematics contributed to this field. Around 1730, De Moivre addressed some of these problems in the 3rd edition of The Doctrine of Chances . Even earlier (1709), Nicolas Bernoulli studies problems related to savings and interest in the Ars Conjectandi . In 1730, Daniel Bernoulli studied "moral probability" in his book Mensura Sortis , where he introduced what would today be called "logarithmic utility of money" and applied it to gambling and insurance problems, including

2242-486: The economy is going, or the effect of any shock upon it. The new, more humble, approach sees danger in dramatic policy changes based on model predictions, because of several practical and theoretical limitations in current macroeconomic models; in addition to the theoretical pitfalls, ( listed above ) some problems specific to aggregate modelling are: Complex systems specialist and mathematician David Orrell wrote on this issue in his book Apollo's Arrow and explained that

2301-451: The economy would respond to specific economic shocks (allowing the models to control for all the variability in the real world; this was a test of model vs. model, not a test against the actual outcome). Although the models simplified the world and started from a stable, known common parameters the various models gave significantly different answers. For instance, in calculating the impact of a monetary loosening on output some models estimated

2360-489: The exact form of these equations. This is because complex systems like the economy or the climate consist of a delicate balance of opposing forces, so a slight imbalance in their representation has big effects. Thus, predictions of things like economic recessions are still highly inaccurate, despite the use of enormous models running on fast computers. See Unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics § Economics and finance . Economic and meteorological simulations may share

2419-533: The extent that it accurately mirrors the relationships that it purports to describe. Creating and diagnosing a model is frequently an iterative process in which the model is modified (and hopefully improved) with each iteration of diagnosis and respecification. Once a satisfactory model is found, it should be double checked by applying it to a different data set. According to whether all the model variables are deterministic, economic models can be classified as stochastic or non-stochastic models; according to whether all

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2478-412: The first model of state quarter made, the mint gave it a disproportionate weight causing vending machines to not accept it. The quarter die was quickly fixed. Some Delaware quarters appeared without the last E , now saying, "THE FIRST STAT". A major error occurred in 2000 when the reverse die of a Sacagawea dollar was combined with the obverse die of a state quarter on dollar-coin planchets to form what

2537-480: The major problems addressed by economic models has been understanding economic growth. An early attempt to provide a technique to approach this came from the French physiocratic school in the eighteenth century. Among these economists, François Quesnay was known particularly for his development and use of tables he called Tableaux économiques . These tables have in fact been interpreted in more modern terminology as

2596-413: The model may omit issues that are important to the question being considered, such as externalities . Any analysis of the results of an economic model must therefore consider the extent to which these results may be compromised by inaccuracies in these assumptions, and a large literature has grown up discussing problems with economic models , or at least asserting that their results are unreliable. One of

2655-535: The models could ultimately produce reliable long-term forecasts. However, the validity of this conclusion has generated two challenges: More recently, chaos (or the butterfly effect) has been identified as less significant than previously thought to explain prediction errors. Rather, the predictive power of economics and meteorology would mostly be limited by the models themselves and the nature of their underlying systems (see Comparison with models in other sciences above). A key strand of free market economic thinking

2714-462: The motto "IN GOD WE RUST." The United States produces proof coinage in circulating base metal and, since 1992, in separately sold sets with the dimes, quarters, and half-dollars in silver. For the silver issues, the 1999 set is the most valuable, being the first year of the series and with a relatively small mintage, although prices have significantly decreased since the 50 State Quarters Program ended. The set in base metal, of this or any other year,

2773-445: The president rejects a bill or resolution while the Congress is in session, a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress is needed for reconsideration to be successful. Promulgation in the sense of publishing and proclaiming the law is accomplished by the president, or the relevant presiding officer in the case of an overridden veto, delivering the act to the archivist of the United States . The archivist provides for its publication as

2832-416: The president, receive a congressional override from 2 ⁄ 3 of both houses. In the United States, acts of Congress are designated as either public laws , relating to the general public, or private laws , relating to specific institutions or individuals. Since 1957, all Acts of Congress have been designated as "Public Law X–Y" or "Private Law X–Y", where X is the number of the Congress and Y refers to

2891-413: The relationships in question than by trying to understand the entire economic process. The details of model construction vary with type of model and its application, but a generic process can be identified. Generally, any modelling process has two steps: generating a model, then checking the model for accuracy (sometimes called diagnostics). The diagnostic step is important because a model is only useful to

2950-430: The same order that the states ratified the Constitution or were admitted to the Union . Each quarter's reverse commemorated one of the 50 states with a design emblematic of its unique history, traditions, and symbols . Certain design elements, such as state flags , images of living persons, and head-and-shoulder images of deceased persons were prohibited. The authorizing legislation and Mint procedures gave each state

3009-454: The selection of state quarter designs. By the end of 2008, all of the original 50 States quarters had been minted and released. The official total, according to the US Mint, was 34,797,600,000 coins. The average mintage was 695,952,000 coins per state, but ranged from Virginia's 1,594,616,000 to Oklahoma's 416,600,000. Demand was stronger for quarters issued early in the program. This was due to weakening economic conditions in later years and

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3068-408: The sequential order of the bill (when it was enacted). For example, P. L. 111–5 ( American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ) was the fifth enacted public law of the 111th United States Congress . Public laws are also often abbreviated as Pub. L. No. X–Y. When the legislation of those two kinds are proposed, it is called public bill and private bill respectively. The word "act", as used in

3127-430: The states for selection of a final design. States usually employed one of two approaches in making this selection. In 33 states, the governor selected the final recommended design, often based on the recommendations of advisory groups and citizens. In the other 17 states, citizens selected the final design through online, telephone, mail, or other public votes. US Mint engravers applied all final design concepts approved by

3186-564: The support of the director of the mint and the Treasury Secretary-appointed CCCAC, the Treasury Department opposed the 50 States Quarters Program, as commemorative coinage had come to be identified with abuses and excesses. The Mint's economic models estimated the program would earn the government between $ 2.6 billion and $ 5.1 billion in additional seignorage and $ 110 million in additional numismatic profits. Diehl and Castle used these profit projections to urge

3245-488: The term "act of Congress", is a common, not a proper noun . The capitalization of the word "act" (especially when used standing alone to refer to an act mentioned earlier by its full name) is deprecated by some dictionaries and usage authorities. However, the Bluebook requires "Act" to be capitalized when referring to a specific legislative act. The United States Code capitalizes "act". The term "act of Congress"

3304-494: The variables are quantitative, economic models are classified as discrete or continuous choice model; according to the model's intended purpose/function, it can be classified as quantitative or qualitative; according to the model's ambit, it can be classified as a general equilibrium model, a partial equilibrium model, or even a non-equilibrium model; according to the economic agent's characteristics, models can be classified as rational agent models, representative agent models etc. At

3363-402: The waning of the initial surge of demand when the program was launched. Another factor was the reassertion of the Treasury Department's opposition to the program. When the director's term ended in 2000, the Treasury proceeded to reduce and finally terminate the most effective elements of the Mint's promotional program despite the high return on investment they earned. In 1997, Congress passed

3422-415: The weather, human health and economics use similar methods of prediction (mathematical models). Their systems—the atmosphere, the human body and the economy—also have similar levels of complexity. He found that forecasts fail because the models suffer from two problems: (i) they cannot capture the full detail of the underlying system, so rely on approximate equations; (ii) they are sensitive to small changes in

3481-464: The years the program ran. Home Shopping Network , Franklin Mint , and Littleton Coin Company were among the most prominent in ad space. Since the 50 State Quarters Program was expected to increase public demand for quarters which would be collected and taken out of circulation, the Mint used economic models to estimate the additional seigniorage the program would produce. These estimates established

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