Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/247304 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2021/35
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
This paper presents a novel agent-based model of land use and technological change in the agricultural sector under environmental boundaries, finite available resources and changing land productivity. In particular, we model a spatially explicit economy populated by boundedly-rational farmers competing and innovating to fulfill an exogenous demand for food, while coping with a changing environment shaped by their production choices. Given the strong technological and environmental uncertainty, farmers learn and adaptively employ heuristics which guide their decisions on engaging in innovation and imitation activities, hiring workers, acquiring new farms, deforesting virgin areas and abandoning unproductive lands. Such activities in turn impact on land productivity, food production, food prices and land use. We firstly show that the model can replicate key stylized facts of the agricultural sector. We then extensively explore its properties across several scenarios featuring different institutional and behavioral settings. Finally, we showcase the properties of model in different applications considering deforestation and land abandonment; soil degradation; and climate impacts.
Subjects: 
Agriculture
Land use
Agent-based model
Technological change
Environmental boundaries
Sustainability
JEL: 
C63
Q15
Q16
Q50
Q55
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
2.36 MB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.