The Evolutionary Game of Poverty Traps

We study an evolutionary game in which the individual behavior of the economic agents can lead the economy either into a low-level or a high-level equilibrium. The model represents two asymmetric populations, “leaders and followers”, where in each round an economic agent of population 1 is paired with a member of population 2. Our evolutionary game is a signaling game in which only the leader has private information. The leader moves first; the follower observes the leader's action, but not the leader's type, before choosing her own action. We found the equilibria both as self-confirming and evolutionarily stable strategies. Furthermore, considering an imitative behavior of the followers, we show that to overcome the poverty trap there exists a threshold value equals to the ratio "education costs-efficiency wages" of the number of high-profile economic agentsEvolutionary games, imitation rule, poverty traps, replicator dynamics, signaling games, strategic complementarities

On Institutional Designs and Corruption by Imitation

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we claim the corruption is driven by imitative behavior for those agents facing an institutional design of corruption. So this paper analyzes an individual level approach and tackles the question of why people engage in corrupt exchange. We show that institutional design determines corruption and that there exists a threshold level in order to imitate the noncorrupt (honest) behavior.Corrupt behavior; Evolutionary dynamics; Imitative behavior; Institutions and operations

On evolutionarily stable strategies and replicator dynamics in asymmetric two-population games

We analyze the main dynamical properties of the evolutionarily stable strategy ESS for asymmetric two-population games of finite size in its corresponding replicator dynamics. We introduce a defnition of ESS for two-population asymmetric games and a method of symmetrizing such an asymmetric game. Then, we show that every strategy profile of the asymmetric game corresponds to a strategy in the symmetric game, and that every Nash equilibrium (NE) of the asymmetric game corresponds to a (symmetric) NE of the symmetric version game. So, we study (standard) replicator dynamics for the asymmetric game and define corresponding (non-standard) dynamics of the symmetric game.Asymmetric game; Evolutionary games; ESS; Replicator dynamics.

A Good Policy of Sustainable Tourism

We consider an extensive form game to analyze the interdependence between environmental protection of resources, the activities related with the tourism and the behavior of a local population. We answer two questions: 1) Suppose that the central planner invest in tourist activities, has he incentives to do an aggressive propagandistic campaign to convince the tourist to come for the country? 2) How good is from the environmental point of view that the local inhabitants prefer to work in tourist activities? So we analyze the situation when it's possible to obtain a sustainable tourism in a country such that the tourism is the main economic activity.Imperfect information, mixed strategies, repeated game, sustainable tourism

The Evolutionary Processes for the Populations of Firms and Workers

This paper analyzes the cultural evolution of firms and workers. Following an imitation rule, each firm and worker decides whether to be innovative (or not) and skilled (or unskilled). We apply evolutionary game theory to find the system of replicator dynamics, and characterize the low-level and high-level equilibria as Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESS) “against the field.” Hence, we study how a persistent state of underdevelopment can arise in strategic environments in which players are imitative rather than rational maximizers. We show that when the current state of the economy is in the basin of attraction of the poverty trap, players should play against the field if they want to change their status quo. The threshold level to overcome the poverty trap can be lowered if there is an appropriate policy using income taxes, education costs and skill premia. Hence, we study the replicator dynamics with a subsidy and payoff taxation to overcome the poverty trap.Imitative behavior, conformism, poverty traps, skill premium, strategic complementarities

A Model of Imitative Behavior in the Population of Firms and Workers

We study an imitation game of strategic complementarities between the percentage of high-skilled workers and innovative firms, namely, human capital and R&D, respectively. We show that this model has two pure Nash equilibria, one of them with high investment in R&D and skilled workers while the other one, which we interpret as poverty trap, exhibits lack of skills and underinvestment. Furthermore, we show that we can avoid the poverty trap if the number of innovative firms is larger than a threshold value allowing an increment of the number of skilled workersImitative behavior, conformism, poverty traps, strategic complementarities

THE EFFECTS ON ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTMENT OF CHANGES IN TOURISM DEMAND

In this short paper we analyze the impact of tourist demand in hotel rooms on the investment of hotels on environmental quality. We show that when income of the tourists increases, then to maintain the demand for rooms, the hotels must in-crease the investment on the environmental quality of the region where there is an increment of the tourist activity. In the particular case where we have three differ-ent hotel chains located in three different tourist regions, we show that the incen-tive of hotel chains to invest in environmental quality depends on the demand for days of rest on the part of tourists and on the level of aggregate income. We also show that if total income increase, then the incentive to invest in environmental quality increases in the region where the price of a hotel room is lower.environmental investment, hotelling competition, service quality, sustainable tourism

Unicidad del equilibrio de Nash-Cournot con correspondencias de mejor respuesta contractivas

In this work we obtain new conditions to uniqueness of Nash equilibrium in the Cournot oligopoly model. These conditions assure that the reaction functions are contractions and they are not reduced to the obtained ones by Rosen, inasmuch as they do not demand the strict concavity of the bene¯t functionsmejor respuesta, contraccion, equilibrio de Cournot, unicidad