A Harris-Todaro agent-based model to rural-urban migration

The Harris-Todaro model of the rural-urban migration process is revisited under an agent-based approach. The migration of the workers is interpreted as a process of social learning by imitation, formalized by a computational model. By simulating this model, we observe a transitional dynamics with continuous growth of the urban fraction of overall population toward an equilibrium. Such an equilibrium is characterized by stabilization of rural-urban expected wages differential (generalized Harris-Todaro equilibrium condition), urban concentration and urban unemployment. These classic results obtained originally by Harris and Todaro are emergent properties of our model.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Espíndola,Aquino L., Silveira,Jaylson J., Penna,T. J. P.
Format: Digital revista
Language:English
Published: Sociedade Brasileira de Física 2006
Online Access:http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-97332006000500002
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