Emergent Results of Artificial Economics

Artificial economics is a computational approach that aims to explain economic systems by modeling them as societies of intelligent software agents. The individual agents make autonomous decisions, but their actual behaviors are constrained by available resources, other individuals' behaviors, and institutions. Intelligent software agents have communicative skills that enable simulation of negotiation, trade, reputation, and other forms of knowledge transfer that are at the basis of economic life. Incorporated learning mechanisms may adapt the agents' behaviors. In artificial economics, all system behavior is generated from the individual agents' simulated decisions; no system level laws are a priori imposed. For instance, price convergence and market clearing may emerge, but not necessarily. Thus, artificial economics facilitates the study of the mechanisms that make the economy function. This book presents a selection of peer-reviewed papers addressing recent developments in this field between economics and computer science.