Abstract:
The starting point for our analysis was the thesis of neo-institutionalism and evolutionary theory that an increase in the production factors determines only the possibility of economic growth (extensive growth), and the actual growth is associated with innovation, including the structural changes. We explored the question of how much change the structure of relationships between elements affects the production capacity of the economy, as well as the question of how effective are agent-based models for the analysis of heterogeneous systems. We used agent-based modeling as a method of the research. We proceeded a series of numerical experiments namely randomly changes in the structure of relations between consumers and producers and tracked the total consumption of resources. Changing the inputs of the system (resource consumption) and monitored outputs (manufactured products) is a traditional approach, but we varied the internal structure of the system and tracked changes in the level of costs. The first experiments showed that the assumption of perfect information market leads to a monopoly and inefficiency. Then perfect information assumption was removed (restricted information — one of the assumptions of the evolutionary theory). The main result of the experiment are cyclical fluctuations in the market (the analogy with the cobweb model), market segmentation and disappearing of some firms (natural selection in terms of evolutionary theory). Further experiments were focused on research how the imperfect information affects to the properties of the market. We found that the information diffusion leads to cycle period reducing, to increasing of equilibrium achievement period, to increasing the monopolization level and to decreasing of market efficiency. The following experiments (based on the approach «learning by doing») demonstrated so-called Matthew Effect: more efficient producers evolved to become more efficient, and captures all the more and more market share. However, in conditions of limited information Matthew Effect manifested locally, on separate market segments.
