Two Modes of Scheduling in a Simple Economic Agent-Based Model

Sarah Wolf, Steffen Fürst, Sophie Knell, Wiebke Lass, Daniel Lincke, Antoine Mandel, Jonas Teitge, Carlo Jaeger

2012

Abstract

Agent-based models (ABMs), and with them simulation, are gaining importance in economics. As they allow to study coordination problems in a dynamic setting, they can be helpful tools for identifying win-win strategies for climate policy. This paper argues that strongly simplified models can support a better understanding of economic ABMs. We present work in progress on an example case: while in economic systems in the real world many actions and interactions by various agents take place in parallel, often ABMs use sequential computation. With a simple economic agent-based model of firms that trade and produce goods, we explore and discuss two alternative modes of scheduling: the timetable model, where all agents complete one step after the other, and the heliotropic model, where one agent after the other completes steps. We find that the timetable model is better suited for working with data from national statistics, while the heliotropic model dispenses with random shuffling that is often introduced to guarantee symmetric expectations for agents. The latter can be used in a completely deterministic fashion, providing a baseline case for studying the system’s dynamics.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Wolf S., Fürst S., Knell S., Lass W., Lincke D., Mandel A., Teitge J. and Jaeger C. (2012). Two Modes of Scheduling in a Simple Economic Agent-Based Model . In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: SIMULTECH, ISBN 978-989-8565-20-4, pages 303-308. DOI: 10.5220/0004032203030308


in Bibtex Style

@conference{simultech12,
author={Sarah Wolf and Steffen Fürst and Sophie Knell and Wiebke Lass and Daniel Lincke and Antoine Mandel and Jonas Teitge and Carlo Jaeger},
title={Two Modes of Scheduling in a Simple Economic Agent-Based Model},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: SIMULTECH,},
year={2012},
pages={303-308},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004032203030308},
isbn={978-989-8565-20-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: SIMULTECH,
TI - Two Modes of Scheduling in a Simple Economic Agent-Based Model
SN - 978-989-8565-20-4
AU - Wolf S.
AU - Fürst S.
AU - Knell S.
AU - Lass W.
AU - Lincke D.
AU - Mandel A.
AU - Teitge J.
AU - Jaeger C.
PY - 2012
SP - 303
EP - 308
DO - 10.5220/0004032203030308