Bifurcation and Choice Behaviour in Complex Systems

André de Palma

A chapter in Bifurcation Analysis, 1985, pp 31-48 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The evolution of systems where brisk transitions may occur has, in the last few years, attracted the attention of the economist, the sociologist and even the business executive. These discontinuous changes are often seen as choice behaviours at the individual or collective level. In this paper we will deal with the cases where the system’s choices result from the ag-gregation of individual behaviours and can be interpreted in terms of bifurcations (Nicolis and Prigogine, 1977, and Prigogine, 1979). However, we do not deny that this concept of bifurcation can also be applied at the individual level. The individuals we shall consider here are supposed to have interdependent behaviours so that the system’s behaviour is not merely reduced to the sum of individual behaviours, and collective behaviours are effectively observed. We note that in the contrary cases the system is linear; as pointed out by Conlisk (1976), linear systems have attracted model makers in Economics and Social Sciences because of the simplicity of the analytical solutions they provide as well as the richness of their statis-tical properties. Our starting point is microscopic in the sense that we describe the various transitions from state to state carried out by the individuals (entities) of the system in the course of time.

Keywords: Utility Function; Bifurcation Diagram; Choice Behaviour; Bifurcation Parameter; Transportation Mode (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1985
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-94-009-6239-2_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-6239-2_3

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