From particles to firms: On the kinetic theory of climbing up evolutionary landscapes

This paper constitutes the first attempt to bridge the evolutionary theory in economics and the theory of active particles in mathematics. It seeks to present a kinetic model for an evolutionary formalization of economic dynamics. The new derived mathematical representation intends to formalize the processes of learning and selection as the two fundamental drivers of evolutionary environments [G. Dosi, M.-C. Pereira and M.-E. Virgillito, The footprint of evolutionary processes of learning and selection upon the statistical properties of industrial dynamics, Ind. Corp. Change, 26 (2017) 187-210]. To coherently represent the aforementioned properties, the kinetic theory of active particles [N. Bellomo, A. Bellouquid, L. Gibelli and N. Outada, A Quest Towards a Mathematical Theory of Living Systems (Birkhäuser-Springer, 2017)] is here further developed, including the complex interaction of two hierarchical functional subsystems. Modeling and simulations enlighten the predictive ability of the approach. Finally, we outline the potential avenues for future research.