186,513 research outputs found
Mathematical analysis of an economic growth model with perfect-substitution technologies
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to highlight certain features of a dynamic optimisation problem in an economic growth model with environmental negative externalities that gives rise to a two-dimensional dynamical system. In particular, it is demonstrated that the dynamics of the model, which is based on a production function with perfect substitutability (perfect substitution technologies), admits a locally attracting equilibrium with a basin of attraction that may be considerably large, as it can extend up to the boundary of the system phase plane. Moreover, this model exhibits global indeterminacy because either equilibrium of the system can be selected according to agent expectation. Formulas for the calculation of the bifurcation coefficients of the system are derived, and a result on the existence of limit cycles is obtained. A numerical example is given to illustrate the results
Taxation, Corruption and Punishment: Integrating Evolutionary Game into the Optimal Control of Government Policy
No full textThis work examines the issue of tax evasion through underreporting activity. The associated control problem for reducing the number of dishonest citizens and dishonest officers is explicitly analyzed. It is assumed that the social planner can choose the level of effort in order to control the dynamic system through the use of the specific countries' characteristics q and p (the probability of punishing, respectively, a tax-evading citizen and a dishonest officer), and the level of public financial effort represented by taxation τ as control variables. The model implicitly considers that there is a direct correlation between these characteristics and the efficacy and the commitment of the institutional system in contrasting illegality. Hence, in the analysis, p and q are considered as the effective probabilities to be charged the fine. This study supplies a novel approach concerning the dynamic model underlying the optimal control, which is based on the strategic interaction of the economic agents' choices. These latter are described by an evolutionary dynamic process which is strongly characterized by p and q. The analysis supplies a useful policy indication for the social planner in choosing the way to obtain a certain socially desirable target. Moreover, it helps the comprehension of the different corruption and evasion behavior observable in the real world, where countries with similar level of taxation may have different levels of corruption
The Effects of Defensive Medicine in Physician–Patient Dynamics: An Agent-Based Approach
No full textWe analyze different scenarios of defensive medicine in a novel framework based on game theory and network analysis, where links in the network represent healing relationships between a physician and a patient. The physician should choose between providing the optimal treatment or an inferior one, which can amount to practicing defensive medicine. The patient should choose whether to litigate or not if an adverse event occurs. A major result of such analysis is that the steady state does not depend on the litigiousness of the initial system or the initial distribution of strategies among physicians or the distribution of patients over physicians. Moreover, reaching a virtuous steady state or an entirely defensive one appears to be independent of the fact that patients take into account the quality of treatments directly or they rely merely on popularity when choosing their physicians
Biodiversity and economic growth: trade-offs between stabilization of the ecological system and preservation of natural dynamics
No full textThis paper investigates how optimal economic growth can affect the natural evolution of the ecological system. Policy
makers may perform defensive actions to protect biodiversity. These actions, however, may deeply modify the natural ecological
dynamics so that the resulting equilibrium has different dynamic features with respect to the equilibrium that would have naturally
emerged without human intervention. To investigate this issue more deeply, we analyze the impact that economic activity and
environmental defensive choices can have on the natural ecological dynamics depending on whether agents care or do not care for
biodiversity. Using an optimal growth model with pollution, in which biodiversity loss may be caused by the negative side-effects
of aggregate production, we show that human action can modify the stability of the ecological fixed points. In particular, from
the simple analytical formulations adopted in the paper, it emerges that – when the levels of the species is sufficiently low at the
fixed point and agents care for biodiversity – human intervention may cause a stabilization of the fixed point and thus avoid the
extinction of a species, even in the absence of defensive expenditures specifically finalized at the protection of that species. It
follows that the protection of biodiversity (through the stabilization of the ecological system) may come at the cost of a change in
the original features of the natural dynamics. Moreover, it is shown that a limit cycle may arise through a Hopf bifurcation from
the interaction of the economic and ecological systems even though none of the two systems taken separately admits a limit cycle
Environmental defensive expenditures, expectations and growth
No full textNowadays many agents meet defensive expenditures to protect themselves against environmental deterioration. Such expenditures may contribute to support economic growth. Environmental degradation, in fact, may induce agents to work harder to replace depleted environmental goods with substitute goods. The consequent rise in the activity level may further deplete the environment, worsening the agents’ expectations on the future environmental quality and increasing their demand for substitute goods. To examine this issue, we adopt a simple model in which agents formulate expectations on the future environment that can be right or wrong and examine how such expectations influence capital accumulation and growth
Analele Stiintifice aie Universitatii « Al Cuza » M. Russu
No full textÉmerit Marcel. Analele Stiintifice aie Universitatii « Al Cuza » M. Russu. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 25ᵉ année, N. 6, 1970. p. 1617
Spese difensive e crescita economica: il ruolo delle aspettative ambientali
No full textNowadays many agents living in industrialised countries
spend an increasing share of their income to defend against
environmental deterioration. As many authors have pointed
out, these environmental defensive expenditures may contribute to raise production and thus also the overall Gross Domestic Product of a country.
This work and the corresponding strand of research
moves one step forward with respect to the existing literature, showing that defensive expenditures can generate not only a higher production level, but also a self-feeding growth process. Environmental degradation, in fact, may induce agents to work harder to replace depleted environmental goods with expensive substitute goods. The consequent rise in the activity level may further deplete the environment, worsening the agents' expectations on the future environmental quality and increasing their demand for substitute goods.
To examine this substitution mechanism between environmental
and private goods, we adopt a simple model with a
continuum of identical agents that live for two periods
(today and tomorrow) and formulate expectations on the
future state of the environment. Differently from previous
contributions in this line of research, we assume a more general setting where agents' expectations on the future environment can be right or wrong and examine how such expectations influence capital accumulation and growth
Interaction between economic and ecological dynamics in an optimal economic growth model
No full textThis work examines the impact that economic growth can have on biodiversity and on the ecological dynamics that would naturally emerge in the absence of human activity. The loss of biodiversity may induce policy makers to implement defensive actions that prevent single species from extinction. These defensive actions, however, may deeply alter the natural dynamics of interaction between species, leading to an ecological equilibrium that is completely different from the one that would exist in the absence of human intervention. This suggests that there might exist a conflict between preserving biodiversity (through stabilization of the ecological system) and preserving the intrinsic features of the ecological dynamics
Free Riders and Strong Reciprocators Coexist in Public Goods Experiments: Evolutionary Foundations
No full textExperimental evidence indicates that free riders and strongly reciprocal papers coexist in the public goods game framework. By means of an evolutionary analysis, we provide an endogenization of this behavioral regularit
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