1,720,993 research outputs found
Mathematical analysis of an economic growth model with perfect-substitution technologies
Full text linkThe 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
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
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
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
Medical Practice and Malpractice Litigation in an Evolutionary Context
No full textWe model the interactions between the behaviors of physicians and patients, subject to clinical and legal risks, by means of evolutionary game theory. We propose an original game in which patients may sue their physician for medical malpractice, and physicians have to choose between two alternative treatments, with different levels of benefits and risks. The safer treatment is also the less effective, therefore its provision corresponds, under the assumptions of our model, to practicing negative defensive medicine. We study the Nash equilibria, test their stability in the replicator dynamics, and analyze their welfare properties. We find that the accuracy of the judicial system plays an important role, with possible counter-intuitive effects related to legal reforms. If the court is not sufficiently accurate, defensive medicine can be favored, paradoxically, by an increase in the probability that defensive physicians are sanctioned by the court. A similar outcome can be generated also by an increase in the compensation paid to patients by physicians, when sanctioned for medical malpractice
Mining and local economies: Dilemma between environmental protection and job opportunities
Full text linkMining areas often experience a climate of social tension due to the potential trade-off between expected employment impact and concerns for environmental damage. We address this topic from a theoretical perspective that, unlike most empirical research, includes medium-term dynamics. We developed a two-sector dynamic model that provides a new way to identify differences among mining regions in terms of conflict risk, local development, and welfare. There are critical points in the natural-resource base of local nonmining activities and in the pollution rate of mining operations, which determine the type of dynamics and its welfare outcomes due to the opening up of the economy to mining investment. Pollution control is a sine qua non for welfare gains despite new job opportunities in the mining sector
Don't feed the bears! Environmental defensive expenditures and species-typical behavior in an optimal growth model
No full textMany studies have stressed that human activities may cause the extinction of single species. Anthropogenic activities, however, may affect not only the number of individuals of single species, but also their behavior. To investigate this issue, we propose a growth model in which agents may care not only for the species' survival but also for the typicality of their behavior. We assume that the environmental defensive expenditures can protect the species avoiding their extinction, but can induce the species to modify their behavior. Results emerging from the model suggest that if the social planner cares for typicality of species behavior, then an infinite growth process may no longer be optimal. Numerical simulations, moreover, show the possible existence of a trade-off between number and behavior of the species, leading the system to a high number of species' members that behave in an atypical way or to few members behaving very typically
Modeling maladaptation in the inequality–environment nexus
Full text linkAdaptation against environmental degradation has the potential to generate further environmental pressures. Does this aspect of adaptation affect the inequality–environment link? To answer this question, we develop a one-sector and one-input model which integrates threats to social and environmental sustainability posed by feedback effects of agents’ adaptation strategies. We distinguish between income inequality and welfare inequality with the latter depending on environmental quality, leisure time, income level and allocation of income to consumption or adaptation. Despite its parsimony, the model describes the conditions for the existence of different inequality–environment dynamic regimes. The model confirms the standard view that environmental degradation exacerbates welfare inequality, but it also produces non-trivial and surprising insights. It illustrates that income inequality affects the type of dynamic regime followed by the economy. High-income economies and economies with high-income inequality are most at risk of following a pattern of maladaptive growth with increasing welfare inequality and environmental pressure
Environmental degradation and comparative advantage reversal
No full textWith the climate rapidly changing and a substantial part of the economy relying on the environment for its productivity, can current competitive advantages and trade patterns be assumed to stay the same in the future? In order to tackle this question, we propose a Comparative Advantage model in which productivity of countries is assumed to be negatively affected by environmental degradation, with larger impacts on the productivity of developing countries. We show that comparative advantages may invert if the environment is sufficiently degraded, leading to a reversal in product specialisation of countries that might make some agents worse off in an open economy
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