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Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain

Cross-impact balance (CIB) analysis provides a system-theoretical view of scenarios useful for investigating complex socio-economic systems. CIB can synthesize a variety of qualitative or quantitative inputs and return information suggestive of system evolution. Current software tools for CIB are li...

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Autores principales: Schweizer, Vanessa Jine, Jamieson-Lane, Alastair David, Cai, Hua, Lehner, Stephan, Smerlak, Matteo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10389699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37523367
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288928
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author Schweizer, Vanessa Jine
Jamieson-Lane, Alastair David
Cai, Hua
Lehner, Stephan
Smerlak, Matteo
author_facet Schweizer, Vanessa Jine
Jamieson-Lane, Alastair David
Cai, Hua
Lehner, Stephan
Smerlak, Matteo
author_sort Schweizer, Vanessa Jine
collection PubMed
description Cross-impact balance (CIB) analysis provides a system-theoretical view of scenarios useful for investigating complex socio-economic systems. CIB can synthesize a variety of qualitative or quantitative inputs and return information suggestive of system evolution. Current software tools for CIB are limited to identifying system attractors as well as describing system evolution from only one scenario of initial conditions at a time. Through this study, we enhance CIB by developing and applying a method that considers all possible system evolutions as transitions in a Markov chain. We investigated a simple three-variable system (27 possible scenarios) of the demographic transition and were able to generally replicate the findings of traditional CIB. Through our experiments with four possible approaches to produce CIB Markov chains, we found that information about transition pathways is gained; however, information about system attractors may be lost. Through a comparison of model results to a recent literature review on human demography, we found that low-income countries are more likely to remain stuck in a demographic trap if economic development is not prioritized alongside educational gains. Future work could test our comparative methodological findings for systems comprised of more than three variables.
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spelling pubmed-103896992023-08-01 Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain Schweizer, Vanessa Jine Jamieson-Lane, Alastair David Cai, Hua Lehner, Stephan Smerlak, Matteo PLoS One Research Article Cross-impact balance (CIB) analysis provides a system-theoretical view of scenarios useful for investigating complex socio-economic systems. CIB can synthesize a variety of qualitative or quantitative inputs and return information suggestive of system evolution. Current software tools for CIB are limited to identifying system attractors as well as describing system evolution from only one scenario of initial conditions at a time. Through this study, we enhance CIB by developing and applying a method that considers all possible system evolutions as transitions in a Markov chain. We investigated a simple three-variable system (27 possible scenarios) of the demographic transition and were able to generally replicate the findings of traditional CIB. Through our experiments with four possible approaches to produce CIB Markov chains, we found that information about transition pathways is gained; however, information about system attractors may be lost. Through a comparison of model results to a recent literature review on human demography, we found that low-income countries are more likely to remain stuck in a demographic trap if economic development is not prioritized alongside educational gains. Future work could test our comparative methodological findings for systems comprised of more than three variables. Public Library of Science 2023-07-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10389699/ /pubmed/37523367 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288928 Text en © 2023 Schweizer et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Schweizer, Vanessa Jine
Jamieson-Lane, Alastair David
Cai, Hua
Lehner, Stephan
Smerlak, Matteo
Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain
title Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain
title_full Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain
title_fullStr Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain
title_full_unstemmed Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain
title_short Pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a Markov chain
title_sort pathways for socio-economic system transitions expressed as a markov chain
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10389699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37523367
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288928
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