An Agent-Based Dynamic Model of Politics, Fertility and Economic Development
Zining Yang
In the political economy of development, government policy
choices at a single point in time can dramatically affect a
country’s development path by impacting fertility, economic
and political decisions across generations. Combining system
dynamics and agent-based modeling approaches in a complex
adaptive system, a simulation framework of the Politics of
Fertility and Economic Development (POFED) is formalized to
understand the relationship between politics, economic, and
demography change at both macro and micro levels. First, a
new political capacity measurement is used; and the system
dynamics model is validated with the latest data. Second, the
endogenous attributes are fused with non-cooperative game
theory in an agent-based framework to simulate the interactive
political economic dynamics of individual intra-societal
transactions. Finally, macro and micro levels are connected with
policy levers of political capacity and political instability by
merging system dynamics and agent-based components. This
paper also explores the agent-based model’s behavioral
dynamics via simulation methods to identify paths towards
economic development and political stability. This model
demonstrates micro level human agency can act, react and
interact, thus driving macro level dynamics, while macro
structures provide political, social and economic environments
that constrain or incentivize micro level human behavior. Full Text
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