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Robert Hoffman

Hoffman, Robert

Hoffman, Robert

President, whatIf? Technologies Inc.; Member, Club of Rome; Fellow, WAAS

Job Title

President, whatIf? Technologies Inc.; Member, Club of Rome; Fellow, WAAS

Robert Hoffman is an economist by training and a systems modeler by vocation. He has been involved in integrated socio-economic and biophysical systems modeling for four decades, first as an analyst and research program director at Statistics Canada, then as Research Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, and since 1990 as president and co-founder of whatIf? Technologies Inc., a company specializing in custom systems modelling. whatIf is the developer of the whatIf? modelling platform upon which simulation models used for strategic planning, scenario analysis and decision support have been built in a range of problem domains including urban and regional planning, integrated energy systems, and sustainability at global and national scales. Robert Hoffman has been a visiting researcher at the IIASA and a consultant to UN agencies in the field of energy analysis. He is author or co-author of more than twenty articles and professional papers published in scholarly journals and books. As a Member of the Club of Rome, he pursues interests in evolutionary economics and global governance.

ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR

Towards a Conceptual System for Managing in the Anthropocene*   ( Money & Finance ), ( Knowledge, Science & Values )
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract This note takes as its frame of reference the concept of ‘deep thinking’ developed by William Byers [Byers 2015]. According to Byers, deep thinking or creative thought can emerge when a problem is framed by two (or more) conceptual systems and it is found that there are areas of incoherency between the conceptual systems. A new conceptual system encompassing elements from the primary conceptual systems may arise from the effort to resolve the...
Concepts for a New Generation of Global Modelling Tools: Expanding our Capacity for Perception   ( Economic Theory ), ( Measures & Indicators )
 Get Full Text in PDFForeword This the first of two articles that describe the development of a new generation of global modelling tools that was first proposed by the authors as members of a working group of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome in 1993. This paper describes the underlying conceptual framework adopted by the group. The companion paper describes the Global Systems Simulator that was intended to serve as proof-of-concept for the proposed modelling tools and the...
On the Need for New Economic Foundations: A Critique on Mainstream Macroeconomics   ( Economic Theory )
Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The body of macroeconomic theory known as the neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis, hereafter mainstream macroeconomics, has dominated the practice of economics since the middle of the twentieth century and is largely unchallenged in institutions that teach economics. Not only does mainstream macroeconomics underlie monetary and fiscal policies intended to promote economic growth, full employment, and price stability, but it also provides the lens through which...