The complex economics of technology production and adoption: an agent-based simulation.

Complexity theory opens new possibilities to model innovation and technological progress as an emergent property of both the purposeful actions of heterogeneous economic agents and the structural characteristics of the system within which the firm acts and reacts. Technology is here conceived as both the product and one of the fundamental determinants of the development of the economic environment. In a world characterized by heterogeneous agents, uncertain outcomes and bounded rationality, agent-based models can overcome the limitations of the analytical approach and provide a glimpse into the black box of knowledge production and its economic determinants. Aim of this work is to develop an agent-based simulation on the basis of the insights offered by complexity and evolutionary economics, in order to analyze how economic decisions affect innovation and, conversely, how technological evolution determines the firms' incentives and performance.