Agent-Based Computational Economics: How the idea originated and where it is going [Paperback]

This book aims to answer two questions that are fundamental to the study of agent-based economic models: what is agent-based computational economics and why do we need agent-based economic modelling of economy? This book provides a review of the development of agent-based computational economics (ACE) from a perspective on how artificial economic agents are designed under the influences of complex sciences, experimental economics, artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, psychology, anthropology and neuroscience.

This book begins with a historical review of ACE by tracing its origins. From a modelling viewpoint, ACE brings truly decentralized procedures into market analysis, from a single market to the whole economy. This book also reviews how experimental economics and artificial intelligence have shaped the development of ACE. For the former, the book discusses how ACE models can be used to analyse the economic consequences of cognitive capacity, personality and cultural inheritance. For the latter, the book covers the various tools used to construct artificial adaptive agents, including reinforcement learning, fuzzy decision rules, neural networks, and evolutionary computation.

This book will be of interest to graduate students researching computational economics, experimental economics, behavioural economics, and research methodology.

Part I. Ideas and Structures of the Book 1. Economics in an Interdisciplinary Context 2. Agent-Based Modeling in the Social Sciences Part II. Origins of ACE 3. The Markets Origin 4. Cellular Automata 5. Economic Tournament Origin 6. Agent-Based Modeling of Economic Experiments Part III. Designing Artificial Economic Agents 7. Calibrated Artificial 8. Zero-Intelligence Agents in the DA Markets 9. Autonomous Agents in the DA PlóØ