English

A Harris-Todaro Agent-Based Model to Rural-Urban Migration

Physics and Society 2015-06-26 v1

Abstract

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.

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/0510248,
  title  = {A Harris-Todaro Agent-Based Model to Rural-Urban Migration},
  author = {Aquino L. Espindola and Jaylson J. Silveira and T. J. P. Penna},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0510248},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

7 pages, 14 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T19:06:52.818Z