✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Why Agent-Based Modeling Never Happened in Economics – Economist Writing Every Day

economistwritingeveryday.com · 2,063 words · saved by 1 readers

I had the title of this post sitting in “Drafts” for a couple months now, but Kris and Paul have given me good reason to actually write about it. These thoughts are largely off the cuff, but they do come from experience. This is not actually as straight-forward question as one might think. If you define it broadly enough as, say, any model within which agents make decisions in accordance with pre-defined rules and assigned attributes, then the answer to the overarching question posed by this post becomes: well, actually, economics has been producing agent-based models for decades, but that answer is as annoying as it is useless. Instead, let’s start with a minimal definition of an agent-based model: If we stop at this minimalist definition, then the answer becomes only marginally less trivial, as essentially any dynamic programming/optimal control model within macroeconomics would meet the definition. This leads to what I consider the minimal definiton of an agent-based model as a dist

I had the title of this post sitting in “Drafts” for a couple months now, but Kris and Paul have given me good reason to actually write about it. These thoughts are largely off the cuff, but they do come from experience. What is Agent-Based Modeling? This is not actually as straight-forward question as one might think. If you define it broadly enough as, say, any model within which agents make decisions in accordance with pre-defined rules and assigned attributes, then the answer to the overarching question posed by this post becomes: well, actually, economics has been producing ag

Explore this link on the map →

related reading