11 June 2013

Post date: Jun 11, 2013 3:46:20 PM

The group welcomed some new arrivals (Massimo and Clement) and after some introductions the discussion went back to primary questions for the group:

• what are some examples of the successful use of agent-based models in different disciplines?
  • are there important papers in different disciplines that try to set out a rationale (including guidelines, standards, etc.) for agent-based modelling?

The earliest ABM seems to be Schelling, but work by Craig Reynolds and Tom Ray followed not that many years later.

Good papers to cite on the pros and cons of ABMs include Eric Bonabeau's 2002 paper http://www.pnas.org/content/99/suppl.3/7280.full. Also Eric Silverman's PhD thesis: https://sites.google.com/site/ericsilvermanphd/phd-thesis. See also Mark Bedau's work (e.g., his paper on downward causation), and of course Epstein and Axtell's work. Di Paolo et al "opaque thought experiments" paper comments clumsily on some of these issues: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/261455/.