Application of Spatial Agent Based Modelling in Agricultural Economics

我的研究着眼于开发基于代理人的需求方经济模型，在南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲的大面积地区实施粮食干预战略。干预战略的特点是采用新颖和创新的农业方法来解决这些地区人口中的微量营养素缺乏问题，在农业中采用新方法的战略并非微不足道。简单地将更新、丰富的农业产品（如化肥）引入市场并不意味着当地产业会在一夜之间采用它。此外，必须通过广泛传播关于新的化肥品种的安全性和附加效益的信息，在当地居民中建立信任。从经济角度来看，可以通过当地市场对这种产品的需求来监测这种介入产品的使用情况。由于经济体由异质混合的实体组成，它们之间的相互作用会产生紧急行为，这些行为可能会提供对人口中颗粒级经济活动的见解。当前的经济模型试图找到人口作为一个整体的总体属性，而忽略了个体属性。这种宏观经济观忽视了构成整个人口的各个实体行为的动态变化。此外，这些模型在性质上过于静态，无法说明大地理区域内实体特征的时空变化。忽视这种关键行为可能导致对当地人口的不完整假设，并有助于制定可能无法完全达到干预目的的干预战略。因此，我的研究将试图揭示大地理区域的地方经济活动的颗粒级特征，以便在干预策略的情况下，可以理解当地人口的紧急行为，并采取有效措施。基于复杂性科学的方法，如基于主体的建模，提供了通过另一种透镜看待经济模型和地理空间研究的方法，并提供了识别和解决空间互动实体之间独特行为模式的方法。了解人口中这种现有的动态经济特征将成为制定有效的地方政策的重要工具

My research takes a look into developing agent based, demand side economic models of food intervention strategies across large areas of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The intervention strategies are characterized by novel and innovative agricultural methods for addressing the micronutrient deficiency amongst the population in those areas.Strategies for deploying new methods to farming are non-trivial. Simply introducing newer, enriched farming products, such as fertilizers, into the market does not mean that local industries will adopt it overnight. Moreover, trust must be established in the local population through widespread dissemination of information regarding the safety and added benefits of the new variants of fertilizers. From the economic standpoint uptake of such interventional products can be monitored through the demand generated for the product in the local markets. As economies consist of heterogeneously mixing entities, interaction between them gives rise to emergent behaviours that might offer insights on the granular level economic activities in a population. Current economic models try to find aggregate properties of the population as a whole and ignore individual attributes. Such macroscopic view of the economy overlooks the dynamic changes in behaviour of the individual entities that make up the entire population. Furthermore, these models are too static in nature to account for spatiotemporal changes in characteristics of entities over large geographical areas. Neglecting such crucial behaviour can potentially lead to incomplete assumptions about the local population and contribute to developing intervention strategies that may not fully serve the purpose of the intervention. Therefore, my research will attempt to uncover the granular level characteristics of local economic activities across large geographical regions such that emergent behaviours in local population, in the event of intervention strategies, can be understood and effective measures be taken. Complexity sciences based methodologies, such as agent based modelling, lend ways to looking at economic models and geospatial research through an alternative lens and offer up ways to identifying and addressing the unique behaviour patterns amongst spatially interacting entities. Understanding such existing dynamic economic characteristic in a population would serve as a vital tool in developing effective local policies