Eficiência na produção de bens públicos: complexidade, adaptação e instituições

Abstract

This work has as main objective to revisit the discussion around the topic of efficiency of institutions in the production of public goods with the help of agent-based models (ABMs) and the theory of complex adaptive systems (CASs). These two contributions, one methodological and the other theoretical and conceptual, will be presented as an altemative way in order to enhance understanding of the topic in relation to the canonical treatment made by rational choice theory and game theory. ln a complementary manner, the results obtained by both groups of approaches will be contrasted. MBAs allow construct theoretical models in which agents have a greater diversity of attributes and behaviors. This methodology offers the researcher the possibility of run-time monitoring of the process of differentiation and evolution of behavioral strategies and greater flexibility for specific changes of model parameters. In tum, the concepts belonging to the literature of CASs provide a means of interpreting the dynamics simulated by ABMs. According to these two contributions, aggregate pattems of behavior can be understood as an emergent phenomenon resulting from the continuous differentiation of individual trajectories in adaptive interaction and subject to recurrent absence of systemic equilibrium, and this feeding back individual interactions. To evaluate the suitability of the use of ABMs and concepts of CASs to research in the social sciences, will be used as a criterion their ability to produce dynamic able to be understood according canonical topics of social sciences, as dilemmas of collective action, and areas of expertise as democratic theory. Notions or concepts such as values, norms and social action will be mobilized for the interpretation of the results generated by ABMs to be presented throughout the dissertation.