Abstract
The work develops and investigates a mathematical model for evolution of the technological structure of an economic system where different technologies compete for the common essential resources. The model is represented by a system of consumer–resource rate equations. Consumers are technologies formalized as populations of weakly differentiated firms producing a similar commodity with like average output. Firms are characterized by the Leontief–Liebig production function in stock-flow representation. Firms self-replicate with a rate proportional to production output of the respective technology and dissolve with a constant rate of decay. The resources are supplied to the system from outside and consumed by concerned technologies; the unutilized resource amounts are removed elsewhere. The inverse of a per firm break-even resource availability is proposed to serve as a measure for competitiveness towards a given resource. The necessary conditions for coexistence of different technologies are derived, according to which each contender must be a superior competitor for one specific resource and an inferior competitor for the others. The model yields a version of the principle of competitive exclusion: in a steady state, the number of competing technologies cannot exceed the number of limiting resources. Competitive outcomes (either dominance or coexistence) in the general system of multiple technologies feeding on multiple essential resources are shown to be predictable from knowledge of the resource-dependent consumption and growth rates of each technological population taken alone. The proposed model of exploitative competition with explicit resource dynamics enables more profound insight into the patterns of technological change as opposed to conventional mainstream models of innovation diffusion.
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Reference93 articles.
1. The diffusion of hybrid seed corn in two Iowa communities;B Ryan;Rural Sociology,1943
2. Hybrid corn: an exploration in the economics of technological change;Z Griliches;Econometrica,1957
3. Stoneman PL. Technological diffusion: the viewpoint of economic theory. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick, Department of Economics; 1985. 270. Available from: https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/270.html.
4. New combinations in Schumpeter’s economics: the lineage of a concept;DA Harper;History of Economics Review,2020
Cited by
4 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献