Positive dynamical systems in discrete time. Theory, models and applications (Q479208)

The title of the book refers to systems in which some essential ingredients (like the phase space or mappings governing the dynamics) are in some sense positive. Usually that means self-maps of convex cones in real linear spaces. The book provides a comprehensive information on such systems and their practical applications. Chapter 1 presents some simple examples:1-dimensional population dynamics, the Leslie model population, single good price dynamics, the Leontief production model, and the opinion dynamics. In Chapter 2 the fundamentals of the theory of concave operators are provided and generalizations of the Perron-Frobenius Theorem to those operators are given. They are applied to difference equations, stability problems related to the Leslie model, and price setting in the Leontief model. Chapter 3 is devoted to internal metrics on convex cones. The considered topics include geometric properties and completeness. Problems on contractive dynamics, in particular, related to attractivity of fixed points, are considered in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5 the so-called ascending operators are considered. The presented material contains nonlinear extensions of the Jentzsch's theorem (generalizing Perron-Frobenius to infinite dimensions). Section 6 provides results on the existence of trichotomy limit behavior of operators in cones. In particular, a theorem on trichotomy for cooperative systems of differential equations is proved. The questions on the ergodicity of non-autonomous systems are considered in Section 7. Apart from theoretical results, an extension of the Coale-Lopez theorem on demography, a version of the Poincaré theorem on difference equations, results on price dynamics, and results on model population under periodic enforcement are proved. Finally, in Section 8 results on interactions in dynamical systems are presented. They are based on properties of stochastic matrices, in particular on a generalization of the Wolfowitz' theorem. They refer to various problems on social behavior, including the dynamics of swarms of animals.