Decentralised experimentation and mutual learning of public policies is seen as one of the important advantages of federal systems (Oates: laboratory federalism). Based upon Hayekian ideas of the advantages of decentralised experimentation (as a discovery procedure), we analyse the long-term...

Traditional (i.e. analytical) modelling practices in the social sciences rely on a very well established, although implicit, methodological protocol, both with respect to the way models are presented and to the kinds of analysis that are performed. Unfortunately, computer-simulated models often...

Hayek's well-known evolutionary concept of "competition as a discovery procedure" can be characterized as a parallel process of experimentation, in which rivalrous firms generate and test hypotheses about the best way to fulfill the consumers' preferences. Through this permanent process of...

In this paper, we compare the computational and sociological study of norms, and resimulate previous simulations (Conte and Castelfranchi 1995a, Castelfranchi, Conte and Paolucci 1998) under slightly different conditions. First, we analyze the relation between norms, social inequality and...