Does anyone know of good examples of generic agent-based market economies? I'm thinking of something as simple as this.
A population consists of agents each of which has certain continuing needs (such as food, clothing, shelter, Internet access, etc.) to survive. As a starting point, let's assume that each agent needs one unit of each of N resources every time period. Let's also assume that each agent is specialized and is capable of creating enough of one of the needed resources to satisfy the needs of N agents. (The fact that I used the same N in both places was intentional.) To keep it simple let's assume that these acts of creation occur from scratch, i.e., that the creator doesn't need raw materials, that all that's necessary for an agent to create a needed resource is that the agent be alive. The agents presumably develop a barter economy, trading the resources they create for the resources they need to stay alive. Perhaps markets develop, and perhaps money develops. At this point the economy should be fairly stable. Each agent creates enough stuff so that s/he can trade it for what s/he needs to stay live. Perhaps some of the agents learn how to be more efficient in creating their resource and begin to accumulate "wealth" in some form. Perhaps the agents have discretionary desires, which they fill if they have enough resources left over after meeting their basic needs. Perhaps there are communal services that are paid for by taxes or memberships. This could become increasingly elaborate. It seems to me that models of this sort must have been developed -- perhaps many times. Does anyone know of any references to this sort of work? Thanks. -- Russ Abbott _____________________________________________ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
