SPECIAL ISSUE THE HUMAN ACTOR IN ECOLOGICAL-ECONOMIC MODELS Environment and institutions: a complex dynamical systems approach

Environmental issues are characterised by uncertainty and problems of cooperation. Societal responses to such challenges are institutions: beliefs, norms, relationships, property rights, agencies, etc. We discuss here a bottom-up approach to the emergence of institutions such as beliefs and norms in pollution issues and agri-environmental policy implementation. The models are based on networks of automata, Bayesian updating and coupled map lattices. They exhibit clear organisational properties and regime transitions according to their parameters. The behaviours predicted by these models often differ from the predictions of standard economy based on unbounded rationality. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.