GERARD WEISBUCH
HOWARD GUTOWITZ
and GUILLEMETTE DUCHATEAU NGUYEN
(1)Laboratoire de Physique Statistique
de
l'Ecole Normale Supérieure
24 rue Lhomond, F 75231 Paris Cedex 5, France.
(2) ESPCI
Laboratoire d'Electronique 10 rue Vauquelin
75005 Paris, France
(3) The SantaFe Institute
1399 Hyde Park Road
Santa FE, NM 87501, USA
email:weisbuch@physique.ens.fr
This html manuscript is a short version of a working paper of Santa Fe series 94-04-018.
Abstract.
Economic choices involving pollution, like those concerning common resources, relate to the emergence of cooperation among actors. Since pollution propagates in space, the temporal dynamics of economic choices is coupled to the spatial dynamics of pollution. We start from a simple description of the internal representations of the agents proposed by Arthur and Lane (1993) to describe information contagion. The simulations done using SWARM software allow us to discuss the maximum price that the agents accept to pay for non-polluting devices as a function of pollution, propagation of information and memory characteristics of the agents. We also characterize the spatio-temporal dynamics of choices, market shares and pollution.