Don't just do something, stand there! Reflections on the counterintuitive behavior of complex systems, seen through the eyes of System Dynamics, Systems Thinking and simulation.
Model Name: A Behavioral Analysis of Learning Curve Strategy
Citation: A Behavioral Analysis of Learning Curve Strategy, John D. Sterman and Rebecca Henderson, Sloan School of Management, MIT and Eric D. Beinhocker and Lee I. Newman, McKinsey and Company.
Neoclassical models of strategic behavior have yielded many insights into competitive behavior, despite the fact that they often rely on a number of assumptions-including instantaneous market clearing and perfect foresight-that have been called into question by a broad range of research. Researchers generally argue that these assumptions are “good enough” to predict an industry’s probable equilibria, and that disequilibrium adjustments and bounded rationality have limited competitive implications. Here we focus on the case of strategy in the presence of increasing returns to highlight how relaxing these two assumptions can lead to outcomes quite different from those predicted by standard neoclassical models. Prior research suggests that in the presence of increasing returns, tight appropriability and accommodating rivals, in some circumstances early entrants can achieve sustained competitive advantage by pursuing Get Big Fast (GBF) strategies: rapidly expanding capacity and cutting prices to gain market share advantage and exploit positive feedbacks faster than their rivals. Using a simulation of the duopoly case we show that when the industry moves slowly compared to capacity adjustment delays, boundedly rational firms find their way to the equilibria predicted by conventional models. However, when market dynamics are rapid relative to capacity adjustment, forecasting errors lead to excess capacity, overwhelming the advantage conferred by increasing returns. Our results highlight the risks of ignoring the role of disequilibrium dynamics and bounded rationality in shaping competitive outcomes, and demonstrate how both can be incorporated into strategic analysis to form a dynamic, behavioral game theory amenable to rigorous analysis.
The original paper is on Archive.org ; it was eventually published in Management Science. You can get the MS version from John Sterman’s page here.
Source: Replicated by Tom Fiddaman
Units balance: Yes
Format: Vensim (the model uses subscripts, so it requires Pro, DSS, or Model Reader)
This model is the product of my Major Qualifying Project (MQP) for my Bachelors degree in the field of system dynamics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. There were two goals to this project:
1) To develop a model that reasonably simulates the historic attacks by the al-Qaida terrorist network against the United States.
2) To evaluate the usefulness of the model for developing public understanding of the terrorism problem.
The full model and report are available on my website.
Reference Mode
The reference mode for this model was the escalation of attacks linked to al-Qaida against the U.S., as shown below. The data for this chart is available through this Google Document.
Causal View of the Model
Below is the causal diagram of the primary feedback loops in the model.
Online Story Model
There is an online story version that explains the primary model structure as well as complete iThink and Vensim models on my MQP page.
Peer reviewed: Yes (probably when submitted for publication?)
Units balance: Yes
Format: Vensim
Target audience: People interested in the concept of payments for environmental services as a means of improving land use and conservation of natural resources.
Questions answered: How might land users’ environmental ethic be influenced by, and influence, payments for environmental services.
Models in the Special Issue of the System Dynamics Review on Environmental and Resource Systems, Andrew Ford & Robert Cavana, Editors. System Dynamics Review, Volume 20, Number 2, Summer of 2004.
Modeling the Effects of a Log Export Ban in Indonesia by Richard G. Dudley
The Dynamics of Water Scarcity in Irrigated Landscapes: Mazarron and Aguilas in South-eastern Spain by Julia Martinez Fernandez & Angel Esteve Selma
Misperceptions of Basic Dynamics: The Case of Renewable Resource Management by Erling Moxnes
Models for Management of Wildlife Populations: Lessons from Spectacle Bears in Zoos and Gizzly Bears in Yellowstone by Lisa Faust, Rosemary Jackson, Andrew Ford, Joanne Earnhardt and Steven Thompson
Modeling a Blue-Green Algae Bloom by Steven Arquitt & Ron Johnstone
We report experiments assessing people’s intuitive understanding of climate change. We presented highly educated graduate students with descriptions of greenhouse warming drawn from the IPCC’s nontechnical reports. Subjects were then asked to identify the likely response to various scenarios for CO2 emissions or concentrations. The tasks require no mathematics, only an understanding of stocks and flows and basic facts about climate change. Overall performance was poor. Subjects often select trajectories that violate conservation of matter. Many believe temperature responds immediately to changes in CO2 emissions or concentrations. Still more believe that stabilizing emissions near current rates would stabilize the climate, when in fact emissions would continue to exceed removal, increasing GHG concentrations and radiative forcing. Such beliefs support wait and see policies, but violate basic laws of physics.
The climate bathtubs are really a chain of stock processes: accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, accumulation of heat in the global system, and accumulation of meltwater in the oceans. How we respond to those, i.e. our emissions trajectory, is conditioned by some additional bathtubs: population, capital, and technology. This post is a quick look at the first.
I’ve grabbed the population sector from the World3 model. Regardless of what you think of World3’s economics, there’s not much to complain about in the population sector. It looks like this:
World3 population sector
People are categorized into young, reproductive age, working age, and older groups. This 4th order structure doesn’t really capture the low dispersion of the true calendar aging process, but it’s more than enough for understanding the momentum of a population. If you think of the population in aggregate (the sum of the four boxes), it’s a bathtub that fills as long as births exceed deaths. Roughly tuned to history and projections, the bathtub fills until the end of the century, but at a diminishing rate as the gap between births and deaths closes:
Notice that the young (blue) peak in 2030 or so, long before the older groups come into near-equilibrium. An aging chain like this has a lot of momentum. A simple experiment makes that momentum visible. Suppose that, as of 2010, fertility suddenly falls to slightly below replacement levels, about 2.1 children per couple. (This is implemented by changing the total fertility lookup). That requires a dramatic shift in birth rates:
However, that doesn’t translate to an immediate equilibrium in population. Instead,population still grows to the end of the century, but reaching a lower level. Growth continues because the aging chain is internally out of equilibrium (there’s also a small contribution from ongoing extension of life expectancy, but it’s not important here). Because growth has been ongoing, the demographic pyramid is skewed toward the young. So, while fertility is constant per person of child-bearing age, the population of prospective parents grows for a while as the young grow up, and thus births continue to increase. Also, at the time of the experiment, the elderly population has not reached equilibrium given rising life expectancy and growth down the chain.
Achieving immediate equilibrium in population would require a much more radical fall in fertility, in order to bring births immediately in line with deaths. Implementing such a change would require shifting yet another bathtub – culture – in a way that seems unlikely to happen quickly. It would also have economic side effects. Often, you hear calls for more population growth, so that there will be more kids to pay social security and care for the elderly. However, that’s not the first effect of accelerated declines in fertility. If you look at the dependency ratio (the ratio of the very young and old to everyone else), the first effect of declining fertility is actually a net benefit (except to the extent that young children are intrinsically valued, or working in sweatshops making fake Gucci wallets):
The bottom line of all this is that, like other bathtubs, it’s hard to change population quickly, partly because of the physics of accumulation of people, and partly because it’s hard to even talk about the culture of fertility (and the economic factors that influence it). Population isn’t likely to contribute much to meeting 2020 emissions targets, but it’s part of the long game. If you want to win the long game, you have to anticipate long delays, which means getting started now.
