Applied Management Sciences was awarded a contract in September of 1976 from the National Endowment for the Arts with a very broad mandate. Not only were we, within a period of six months, to model a variety of institutional types, but we were also to acquire all of the available data pertaining to these institutional types (and identify and document data gaps in the process), edit the data so as to be suitable for use in model parameter estimation (i.e., regression analysis), use these data to empirically test the models, and offer recommendations regarding what we felt to be the most fruitful future research activities.

This project succeeded in (1) developing full-scale conceptual models for each institutional type (each containing approximately thirty equations); (2) examining available data to identify gaps as well as the data most useful for empirical research; (3) estimating as many equation parameters as data would allow; and (4) exploring alternatives to econometric modeling. Before describing the research findings relative to the behavioral (economic) models, however, our experience with the trend modeling requires discussion. (p. 46)