Chapter 7 Parallel computation Parallel computation represents not only a new mode of computation but a new intellectual paradigm. This chapter provides an overview of the technology of parallel computation in terms of hardware and programming languages; presents some of the fundamental classes of problems encountered in economics and the associated numerical methodologies for their solution; discusses the state of the art computational techniques and focuses on parallel techniques and contrasts them with serial techniques for illumination and instructive purposes; and presents applications of the classes of problems and associated numerical methods to econometrics microeconomics macroeconomics and finance. The emergence of computation as a basic scientific methodology in economics has given access to solutions of fundamental problems that pure analysis observation or experimentation could not have achieved. Parallel computation represents the wave of the future. It is considered to be cheaper and faster than serial computing and the only approach to faster computation currently foreseeable. Parallel computation is appealing hence for the economies of scale that are possible for the potentially faster solution of large scale problems and also for the possibilities that it presents for imitating adjustment or tatonnement processes.