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This book is about time and local history in the Greek world. It argues that choices concerning the articulation and expression of time reflect the values of both those who ‘make’ it and their audiences. This study ranges from the widespread awareness of time's malleability and the perceived value of the past by the citizens of the Greek polis to the formal analysis of time-systems in Hellenistic scholarship. It addresses the development by historians of ways to articulate the long span of historical time, from the chronologies developed by those who wrote universal narratives to those whose stories were about the individual polis. The negotiation of time is of interest in any social context, but it carries particular resonance in the world of Greek poleis, where each community had its own calendar and ran to its own time. Both the articulation of time and the establishment of ‘shared’ histories have been seen as modes of self-expression for communities. An exploration of their intersection is, therefore, especially illuminating. By focusing on city-history, the creation of the past within a restricted community, it is possible to examine more closely the dynamics of how time and the past were ‘made’. Therefore, this study brings together the wider theme of ‘managing time’, with an exploration of how history was created at a local level, within a civic context. It looks at the construction of the past as a social activity, which both reflects and contributes towards the sense of a shared, civic identity.

This book bridges optimal control theory and economics, discussing ordinary differential equations (ODEs), optimal control, game theory, and mechanism design in one volume. Technically rigorous and largely self-contained, it provides an introduction to the use of optimal control theory for deterministic continuous-time systems in economics. The theory of ordinary differential equations is the backbone of the theory developed in the book, and Chapter 2 offers a detailed review of basic concepts in the theory of ODEs, including the solution of systems of linear ODEs, state-space analysis, potential functions, and stability analysis. Following this, the book covers the main results of optimal control theory, in particular necessary and sufficient optimality conditions; game theory, with an emphasis on differential games; and the application of control-theoretic concepts to the design of economic mechanisms. Appendices provide a mathematical review and full solutions to all end-of-chapter problems. The material is presented at three levels: single-person decision making; games, in which a group of decision makers interact strategically; and mechanism design, which is concerned with a designer’s creation of an environment in which players interact to maximize the designer’s objective. The book focuses on applications; the problems are an integral part of the text.