Advances in the agent-based modeling of economic and social behavior

Mitja Steinbacher; Matthias Raddant; Fariba Karimi; Eva Camacho Cuena; Simone Alfarano; Giulia Iori; Thomas Lux

doi:10.1007/s43546-021-00103-3

Advances in the agent-based modeling of economic and social behavior

SN Bus Econ. 2021;1(7):99. doi: 10.1007/s43546-021-00103-3. Epub 2021 Jul 7.

Authors

Mitja Steinbacher¹, Matthias Raddant², Fariba Karimi^{3

4}, Eva Camacho Cuena⁵, Simone Alfarano⁵, Giulia Iori⁶, Thomas Lux²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Law and Business Studies, Krekov trg 1, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
² Department of Economics, Kiel University, Olshausenstraße 40, 24118 Kiel, Germany.
³ Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstädter Str. 39, 1080 Vienna, Austria.
⁴ Department of Computational Social Science, GESIS, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Unter Sachsenhausen 6, 50667 Cologne, Germany.
⁵ Department of Economics, Jaume I University, Avenida Sos Baynat s/n, 12071 Castellón, Spain.
⁶ Department of Economics, School of Social Science, City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB UK.

Abstract

In this review we discuss advances in the agent-based modeling of economic and social systems. We show the state of the art of the heuristic design of agents and how behavioral economics and laboratory experiments have improved the modeling of agent behavior. We further discuss how economic networks and social systems can be modeled and we discuss novel methodology and data sources. Lastly, we present an overview of estimation techniques to calibrate and validate agent-based models and show avenues for future research.

Keywords: Agent-based models; Behavioral economics; Computational economics; Computational social science; Heuristic design; Model calibration; Networks.

Publication types

Review