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BY 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access February 4, 2016

Agent-based Modeling for Decision Making in Economics under Uncertainty

  • Ben Vermeulen EMAIL logo and Andreas Pyka
From the journal Economics

Abstract

Ever since the emergence of economics as a distinct scientific discipline, policy makers have turned to economic models to guide policy interventions. If policy makers seek to enhance growth of an open capitalist economy, they have to take into account, firstly, the uncertainties, inefficiencies, and market failures faced by the agents in the economy, and, secondly, the activities, network structure, and interactions in the innovation and production system. The authors discuss ins-and-outs of developing and using (encompassing and empirically calibrated) agent-based models for (i) abductive theorizing about causes for empirical realities, and (ii) evaluating effects of policy interventions. To ensure that derived policies are suitable to intervene in the real world and not just the stylization of it, they discuss validity and operationalization of agent-based models as well as interpretation of simulation results.

JEL Classification: B52; C63; D81; O32; P10

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Received: 2015-06-03
Revised: 2015-11-11
Accepted: 2016-01-13
Published Online: 2016-02-04
Published in Print: 2016-12-01

© 2016 Ben Vermeulen et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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