Modelo espacial simples da economia: uma proposta teórico-metodológica[A simple spatial economic model: a proposal]

This study simulates the evolution of artificial economies in order to understand the tax relevance of administrative boundaries in the quality of life of its citizens. The modeling involves the construction of a computational algorithm, which includes citizens, bounded into families; firms and governments; all of them interacting in markets for goods, labor and real estate. The real estate market allows families to move to households with higher quality or lower price when the families capitalize property values. The goods market allows consumers to search on a flexible number of firms choosing by price and proximity. The labor market entails a matching process between firms (given its location and offered wage) and candidates, according to their qualification. The government may be configured into a single region, or four or seven distinct sub-national governments, which are all economically conurbated. The role of government is to collect taxes on the value added of firms in its territory and transform the taxes into higher levels of quality of life for residents. Among the limitations of the model, we highlight the difficulty of composing adjustments between processes, classes and agents in time and space. In addition, the model does not yet have a credit market, given the emphasis of the research question on the relevance of municipal administrative boundaries. The analysis of the markets indicate development paths and data-generating mechanisms for each territorial approach used. The results suggest that the configuration of administrative boundaries is relevant to the levels of quality of life arising from the reversal of taxes. The model with seven regions is more dynamic, with higher GDP values, but more unequal and heterogeneous across regions. The simulation with only one region is more homogeneously poor. The study seeks to contribute to a theoretical and methodological framework and to describe, operationalize and test computer models of public finance analysis, with explicitly spatial and dynamic emphasis. Several alternatives of expansion of the model for future research are described, including application to adjacent municipalities of Brazilian metropolitan areas. Moreover, this study adds to the existing literature in the realm of simple microeconomic computational models, specifying relationships between local governments and firms, consumers and households mediated by distance.