We develop an explanation of the emergence of local norms, and the associated phenom- enon of geographical variation in behavior. Individuals are assumed to interact locally with neighbors in an environment with a network externality. Although many patterns of behavior are possible, the...

We apply agent based computer techniques to develop a modeling framework that can be used to study all aspects of commodity markets. The goal is to use advances in computation to study the micro level behavior of the market and its players. This work is motivated by the understanding that the...

Economists have long recognized that the time costs of using different forms of money can be significant and potentially affect the type of media of exchange used. Banks and retailers recognize these costs as well, and market transponder devices to pay for tolls, food and gas as a way to...

Most studies of optimal monetary policy under learning rely on optimality conditions derived for the case when agents have rational expectations. In this paper, we derive optimal monetary policy in an economy where the Central Bank knows, and makes active use of, the learning algorithm agents...

This paper provides a formal definition of emergence, operative in multi-agent framework and which make sense from both a cognitive and an economics point of view. The first part discuses the ontological and epistemic dimension of emergence and provides a complementary set of definitions....

This paper considers the behavior of the exchange rate in a very simple artificial currency market with two currencies and artificial agents who evolve their forecast rules over time via a genetic algorithm. I consider two simple forecast rules, one linear and the other non-linear. Under the...

We have developed an agent-based computational model, extension of an analytical model1 that studies the structure of coalitions of B-to-C web sites, when Internet buyers incur search costs for finding the good that matches their preferences, and coalitions of sites reduce this cost through...

While under recursive least squares learning the dynamics of the economy converges to rational expectations equilibria (REE) which are E–stable, some recent examples propose that E–stability is not a sufficient condition for learnability. In this paper, we provide some further...

We examine optimal policy in an open-economy model with uncertainty and learning, where monetary policy actions affect the economy through the real exchange rate channel. Our results show that the degree of caution or activism in optimal policy depends on whether central banks are in coordinated...