Research on Latin America

Does International Factor Mobility Cause Economic Growth and Development in Latin America?
An Agent-Based Computational Simulation Approach

This research project will address fundamental questions in theory, methodology, and data concerning social dynamic responses to policies and institutions that prevent or allow international factor mobility in Latin American countries.

The project also includes international collaborations with experts on Latin America, as well as American and European experts on computational models. Data will be gathered from the Chilean-based research center "Latinobarometro", from Latin American university-based research centers and government agencies, from international organizations based in Geneva, Switzerland (like the World Trade Organization) and from agent-based computer models that build upon and extend existing computational social science models to generate multi-scale networks over space and time. The new concepts, models, and data integrated by the computational methodology employed in this project, the agent-based computation simulation, build on earlier theories of institutional design and international factor mobility. As a result, the methodology utilized will advance basic understanding of the institutions and policies required for economic growth and development in Latin America, by synergizing disciplines and concepts that typically do not interact, the social sciences and computer science.

The project aims to generate new information about what types of institutions and practices cause economic growth, a research question explored intensively by philosophers like Adam Smith in the eighteenth century and continuing up to the present day with contributions by Solow (1956), Posner (1986), Barro (1994, 1995 & 1996) and others. The proposed research will test economic growth hypotheses and public policies in an original way by using computer simulations, a methodology with broader scope capabilities rather than employing the standard methods of econometrics or case studies. The research project will be developed in collaboration with the Computer Graphics and Animation Lab at UT Dallas. Developing simulations able to mimic the complexity of real-world economies and trade among nations will be an important contribution to the field of computer science and artificial intelligence allowing the interaction across different scientific disciplines. The Principal Investigator, the scientists sponsors and the team of scientists involved in the project will be able to add, complement, exchange and extend expertise and further knowledge about the methodology and the causes and outcomes of international factor mobility.

Results from this project will have multiple broader impacts in the areas of academia and public policymaking about the global economic and domestic political challenges based on how to promote economic growth and development in Latin American countries. Some of the broader impacts of this project are envisioned along the lines of promoting the exchange of researchers between Hispanic scholars living in the United States and those living in Latin American countries, teaching impacts such as a course on applications of Agent-Based Computational Economics and a summer course in Geneva, Switzerland about global economic growth. Developing teaching materials, mentoring students, providing on-line lecture series, publishing promptly in peer reviewed journals, sharing algorithms, educational materials and computer simulations in the Virtual Community Portal of Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning (www.cimlcommunity.org) and presenting the results to non-specialized audiences are some of the activities planned to extend the impact of this research project.