A MATHEMATICAL REPRESENTATION OF ECONOMIC EVOLUTION

This paper analyzes a formalization of economic evolution by means of discrete dynamical systems. An evolutionary process is seen as a seque nce of values of the structural parameters of the economy. Environment al pressures or internal conflicts may force structural changes. The s ource of changes in the last case can be found in the conflicts among structures, which can-be traced back to conflicts between the agents' models of the economy and the actual structures. As usual in evolution ary processes, there exist a variety of possibilities, but as changes respond to unfulfilled requirements,an ordering can be defined on traj ectories. The maximal ones will be called progress-efficient. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.