Steve Keen nears Kickstarter goal for open source economic software

Economist Steve Keen is closing in on his goal to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter to help build “the best economic modelling software ever produced”.

“It’s going to get funded and we’re hoping to get two or three times that much if we can,” Keen told iTNews.

The “Minsky” web application, named after American economist Hyman Minsky, has already had 1000 hours of programming time.

It is being written by computational scientist Russell Standish, led by Nathan Moses, who was a former student of Steve Keen at the University of Western Sydney.

“Economic models almost completely ignore the existence of banks, debt and money, which is completely ridiculous,” Keen said.

“I’ve worked out an incredibly simple way of doing it.

“It’s a relative of the software packages that engineers have been using now for decades to build dynamic systems.”

Keen said finishing the software, which would remain open source, required at least another 5000 hours of programming.

He’s hoping that once available, the software will be used by central banks and treasuries.

"I’m hoping they’ll realise they have to work with dynamic monetary models, rather than the static stuff they do now,” Keen said.

Keen has used his high profile to help attract donors from around the world. The largest volume of pledgers has come through his Debtwatch blog, while the largest amounts have been from direct donors and Twitter, where he has around 9500 followers.