Spatial evolution of industries modelled by cellular automata

•Agent-Based Bak-Sneppen evolutionary model of industrial evolution is employed.•Competition and co-operation explain the formation of industrial clusters.•Self-organisation in spatial clusters evolves towards Zipf’s rank-size distribution.•The main interpretation of the spatial forms in the real ec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business research 2021-05, Vol.129, p.580-588
Main Authors: Zoričak, Martin, Horváth, Denis, Gazda, Vladimír, Hudec, Oto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Cellular automata
Communications industry
Evolution
Evolutionary dynamics
Industrial clusters
Rankings
Robots
Telecommunications services industry
Zipf law
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Summary:•Agent-Based Bak-Sneppen evolutionary model of industrial evolution is employed.•Competition and co-operation explain the formation of industrial clusters.•Self-organisation in spatial clusters evolves towards Zipf’s rank-size distribution.•The main interpretation of the spatial forms in the real economy is industrial districts.•Path dependence and impact of the external shocks are tested in the model. Traditional economic theories often neglect evolutionary aspects and thus offer sterile answers to essential questions grounded in economic reality, such as the dependence of industrial structure on technological progress, evolution of the cooperation/competition within or among industries, or evolutionary stability of cooperation networks. We present a conceptual model of industrial evolution based on agent-based modelling and cellular automata. In evolutionary simulation, the least fitted firms are repeatedly forced to adapt to the changing environment by partial mutations of their profiles. Following self-organised criticality, even a small change in an industrial profile can cause massive waves of firm restructuring causing new spatial patterns. In the long term, new industrial profiles emerge, and firms become self-organised in spatial clusters evolving towards Zipf’s rank-size distribution. The proposed model is able to appropriately explain the long-term evolution of industrial economic structures in both time and space.
ISSN:0148-2963
1873-7978
DOI:10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.043