An Agent-Based Dynamic Model of Politics, Fertility and Economic Development

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 both system dynamics and agent-based modeling approaches in a complex adaptive system, I formalize a simulation framework of the Politics of Fertility and Economic Development (POFED) to understand the relationship between politics, economic, and demography change at both macro and micro levels. First, I validate Abdollahian et al. [1] system dynamics model with the latest data and updated political capacity measurement. Second, I fuse these endogenous attributes with non-cooperative game theory in an agent-based framework to simulate the interactive political economic dynamics of individual intra-societal transactions. Third, I connect macro and micro level with policy levers of political capacity and political instability, by merging system dynamics and agent-based components. I explore the model’s behavioral dynamics via simulation methods to identify paths towards economic development and political stability. This work explains micro level human agency can act, react and interact, thus driving macro level dynamics, as well as how macro structures provide political, social and economic environments that constrain or incentivize micro level human behavior.