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

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

Tourism's Impact on Long-Run Mexican Economic Growth

Tourism is one of the most important factors in the productivity of Mexican economy with significant multiplier effects on economic activity. This paper investigates possible causal relationships among tourism expenditure, real exchange rate and economic growth by using quarterly data. Johansen cointegration analysis shows the existence of one cointegrated vector among real GDP, tourism expenditure and real exchange rate where the corresponding elasticities are positive. The tourism-led growth hypothesis is confirmed through cointegration and causality testing. Tourism expenditure and Real Exchange Rate (RER) are weakly exogenous to real GDP. A modified version of the Granger Causality test shows that causality goes unidirectionally from tourism expenditure and RER to real GDP. Impulse response analysis shows that a shock in tourism expenditure produces a short fall and then a positive effect on growth.economic growth Johansen cointegration test Granger causality tourism-led growth hypothesis.

Dynamic Complementarities, Efficiency and Nash Equilibria for Populations of Firms and Workers

We consider an economy with two types of firms (innovative and non-innovative) and two types of workers (skilled and unskilled), where workers' decisions are driven by imitative behavior, and thus the evolution of such an economy depends on the initial distribution of the firms. We show that there exists a continuous of high level steady states and only one low level and asymptotically stable equilibrium. There exists a threshold value on the initial number of firms to be overcome it to located in the basin of attraction of one of the high level equilibrium. We show that in each high level equilibrium there coexists a share of innovative firms with a share of non-innovative firms, and a share of skilled workers (human capital) coexisting with a share of unskilled workers. But if the initial share of innovative firms is lower than the threshold value, then the economy evolves to a low level equilibrium wholly composed by non-innovative firms and unskilled workers. Finally, we characterise the equilibria as the evolutionarily stable strategies against a field.Imitative Behavior, Poverty Traps, Strategic Complementarities, Two Population Normal Form Game, Threshold Value.

Le disuguaglianze socio-economiche nei consumi alimentari in Italia: evoluzioni strutturali, trend e stili di vita

L’obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di presentare un quadro sull’evoluzione dei consumi alimentari in Italia, cercando di evidenziare i fattori socio-economici che sono alla base del cambiamento strutturale nei consumi e nello stile di vita delle famiglie. I principali risultati, alla luce del questionario somministrato nel 2021, mostrano come le ipotesi secondo cui condizioni socio-economiche e culturali svantaggiate si colleghino ad abitudini di consumo più a rischio e ad una più limitata propensione ad attribuire rilevanza a criteri di scelta relativi alla safety alimentare o alle dimensioni ambientale e politica, non sembrano trovare sostegno

Growth and inequality in the Mexican states: Regimes, thresholds, and traps

Using the inter-regional economic inequality index and the gross state product per capita for the Mexican states over the period 1940–2015, we apply regime dynamics and hierarchical cluster analysis for segmenting the sample into regimes of Mexican states with similar performance. Robust econometric models are studied showing the direction of causality between economic inequality and income per capita, and the existence of a U-shaped curve for the interdependence between economic growth vs economic inequality, and threshold levels. We additionally demonstrate the existence of inequality traps. The education literacy rate as a control variable indicates an inverted U-shaped curve

A Long-run Equilibrium Demand Function: Tourism in Mexico

Tourism demand in Mexico is around 80 percent represented by USA visitors. The goal of this paper is to explain the long-term effects of Tourism Demand in Mexico with respect to US visitors. To reach our goal the methodology of this paper follows the Johansen cointegration analysis and using annual time-series data, a single equation is estimated. With the empirical analyze, we study the tourism demand elasticities considering public investment, relative prices of tourist products, and US income per capita. Further analysis shows only one direction of a strongly positive Granger-causality going from number of tourists to the relative prices. We show that US income positively affects the Mexican tourism demand

A Long-run Equilibrium Demand Function: Tourism in Mexico

Tourism demand in Mexico is around 80 percent represented by USA visitors. The goal of this paper is to explain the long-term effects of Tourism Demand in Mexico with respect to US visitors. To reach our goal the methodology of this paper follows the Johansen cointegration analysis and using annual time-series data, a single equation is estimated. With the empirical analyze, we study the tourism demand elasticities considering public investment, relative prices of tourist products, and US income per capita. Further analysis shows only one direction of a strongly positive Granger-causality going from number of tourists to the relative prices. We show that US income positively affects the Mexican tourism demand