Exploring Evolutionary Economic Geographies

Evolutionary approaches in economics have gathered increasing support over the last 25 years. Despite an impressive body of literature, economists are still far from formulating a coherent research paradigm. The multitude of approaches in evolutionary economics poses problems for the development of an evolutionary economic geography. For the most part, evolutionary economic geography imports selective concepts from evolutionary biology and economics and applies those concepts to specific problems within economic geography. We discuss a number of problems with this approach and suggest that a more powerful and appealing alternative requires the development of theoretically consistent models of evolutionary processes. This paper outlines the contours of an evolutionary model of economic dynamics where economic agents are located in different geographical spaces. We seek to show how competition between those agents, based on the core evolutionary principles of variety, selection and retention, may produce distinct economic regions sharing properties that differentiate them from competitors elsewhere. These arguments are extended to illustrate how the emergent properties of economic agents and places co-evolve and lead to different trajectories of economic development over space.evolutionary economics, economic geography, Generalized Darwinism, biological metaphors, self-organization

Landscape in the Economy of Conspicuous Consumptions \ud

Psychological states side by side with the bounded rational expectations among social agents contributes to the pattern of consumptions in economic system. One of the psychological states are the envy – a tendency to emulate any gaps with other agents’ properties. The evolutionary game theoretic works on conspicuous consumption are explored by growing the micro-view of economic agency in lattice-based populations, the landscape of consumptions. The emerged macro-view of multiple equilibria is shown in computational simulative demonstrations altogether with the spatial clustered agents based upon the emerged agents’ economic profiles

Landscape in the Economy of Conspicuous Consumptions

Psychological states side by side with the bounded rational expectations among social agents contributes to the pattern of consumptions in economic system. One of the psychological states are the envy – a tendency to emulate any gaps with other agents’ properties. The evolutionary game theoretic works on conspicuous consumption are explored by growing the micro-view of economic agency in lattice-based populations, the landscape of consumptions. The emerged macro-view of multiple equilibria is shown in computational simulative demonstrations altogether with the spatial clustered agents based upon the emerged agents’ economic profiles.conspicuous consumption; behavioral economics; agent-based simulations

Doves and hawks in economics revisited. An evolutionary quantum game theory-based analysis of financial crises

The last financial and economic crisis demonstrated the dysfunctional long-term effects of aggressive behaviour in financial markets. Yet, evolutionary game theory predicts that under the condition of strategic dependence a certain degree of aggressive behaviour remains within a given population of agents. However, as the consequences of the financial crisis exhibit, it would be desirable to change the 'rules of the game' in a way that prevents the occurrence of any aggressive behaviour and thereby also the danger of market crashes. The paper picks up this aspect. Through the extension of the in literature well-known Hawk-Dove game by a quantum approach, we can show that dependent on entanglement, also evolutionary stable strategies can emerge, which are not predicted by classical evolutionary game theory and where the total economic population uses a non aggressive quantum strategy

The Aims and Scope of Evolutionary Economic Geography

This aim of this paper is to present the objectives and scope of an evolutionary approach to economic geography. We argue that the goal is not only to utilise the concepts and ideas from evolutionary economics (and evolutionary thinking more broadly) to help interpret and explain how the economic landscape changes over historical time, but also to reveal how situating the economy in space adds to our understanding of the processes that drive economic evolution, that is to say, to demonstrate how geography matters in determining the nature and trajectory of evolution of the economic system. We will argue that evolutionary economic geography is concerned with the spatialities of economic novelty; with how the spatial structures of the economy emerge from the micro-behaviours of economic agents; with how, in the absence of central coordination or direction, the economic landscape exhibits self-organisation; and with how the processes of path creation and path dependence interact to shape geographies of economic development and transformation, and why and how such processes may themselves be place dependent. Economic transformation proceeds differently in different places, and the mechanisms involved neither originate nor operate evenly across space. Our concern is both with the ways in which the forces making for economic change, adaptation and novelty shape and reshape the geographies of wealth creation, work and welfare, and with how the spatial structures and features so produced themselves feed back to influence the forces driving economic evolution. In the final part, we summarize a number of papers that have contributed to evolutionary economic geography, and which will be published in The Handbook on Evolutionary Economic Geography that is edited by the two authors, and forthcoming at Edward Elgar.evolutionary economic geography, industry location, geography of networks, institutions, agglomeration economies

Visitor and firm taxes versus environmental options in a dynamical context

The main objective of the paper is to analyze the effects on economic agents’ behavior deriving from the introduction of financial activities aimed to environmental protection. The environmental protection mechanism we study should permit exchange of financial activities among citizens, firms, and Public Administration. Such a particular “financial market” is regulated by the Public Administration, but mainly fuelled by the interest of two classes of involved agents: firms and dwelling citizens. We assume that the adoption process of financial decisions is described by a two-population evolutionary game and we study the basic features of the resulting dynamics.Environmental options; environment preserving technologies; evolutionary games; tourism

Analyzing the Dynamics of Relative Prices on a Market with Speculative and Non-Speculative Agents Based on the Evolutionary Model

The paper deals with an evolutionary model focused on the relation between the behavior of prices and the structure of the population of economic agents. The model allows for identification of the short-term behavior of prices and the dynamics of the population of economic agents in the context of seven scenarios. These scenarios are a combination of four key factors: market regulations, the maturity of the market; the intervention of the state on the market supply side and the modifications of the incentives to speculate and not-speculate. The main findings of the simulation of the scenarios are: i) The presence of speculators leave long lasting effects which do not die out with the decrease in the number of speculators; ii) In the presence of high speculations the intervention of the state can act as an anchor to the market helping to lower the prices; iii) The market forces have a more lasting effect than the state regulation mechanisms.relative prices, speculative and non-speculative agents, evolutionary model

Evolutionary Concept, Genetic Algorithm and Exhibition Contract in Movie Industry

The paper is about application of evolutionary concept, particularly the application of natural selection process, to the study of movie industry. The importance of the application is that it allows for the heterogeneity and interdependency of market agents in analyzing the economic choice decision. This complexity always presents an obstacle to the study of market behavior, especially when one has to take into account the constant reinforcing effects among the variables, which often renders the problem elusive. The paper intends to explain the economic process, taking into account this complexity through the use of evolutionary concept.Evolutionary selection; opportunity costs; learning and sharing rule

Evolutionary Concept, Genetic Algorithm and Exhibition Contract in Movie Industry

The paper is about application of evolutionary concept, particularly the application of natural selection process, to the study of movie industry. The importance of the application is that it allows for the heterogeneity and interdependency of market agents in analyzing the economic choice decision. This complexity always presents an obstacle to the study of market behavior, especially when one has to take into account the constant reinforcing effects among the variables, which often renders the problem elusive. The paper intends to explain the economic process, particularly the evolution of exhibition contract, taking into account this complexity through the use of evolutionary concept.Evolutionary selection; opportunity costs; learning and sharing rule

Agents intentionality, capabilities and the performance of Systems of Innovation

We are interested on why and how an economic system evolves and, in particular, on the causes of the differences across systems of innovation (SI). SI’s performance differs substantially because there are specific causes at work, apart from the differences in the underlying technologies, institutions, etc. In particular, we refer to the intentionality of the agents interacting within a system for innovation to find out the relationship between agents’ goals, SI’s performance and its policy implications. The underlying thesis in this paper is that agent intentionality is a necessary condition for a substantive explanation of the dynamism of any socio-economic system. The paper departs from an abstract definition of a system as a set of constitutive elements and the connections among them serving a common purpose. And explores how intentionality shapes the structure, evolution and performance of an SI. In this context an evolutionary efficiency criterion is proposed.systems of innovation; intentionality; evolving capabilities; evolutionary efficiency.