We present an electoral agency model that, in a stylized way, captures the public finance structure of Norwegian municipal governments. It drives the following main implication: increasing partisan bias in favor of the incumbent reduces efficiency in public production, and more so the higher the...

This chapter treats a variety of epistemological issues surrounding generative explanation in the social sciences, and discusses the role of agent-based computational models in generative social science.

Models involving human decision-makers often include idealized assumptions, such as rationality, perfect foresight, and access to relevant information. These assumptions usually assure the models' internal validity but, at the same time, might limit the models' power to explain empirical...

After land prices in Germany increased continuously since 2006, policy makers, representatives of farmers' unions, NGOs, and farmers started and continued to discuss or propose new land market regulations to stop price increases and to protect particularly smaller farmers. In this paper we...

Complex systems' approach and methodologies emphasize interactions, diversity and dynamics. Complex systems perspectives also enable public policies to be considered comprehensively and simulated in all their multiplicity of sectors and scales, of cause and effect. This paper attempts to...

Mathematical programming (MP) is a widespread approach to depict production and investment decisions of agents in agent-based models (ABM) related to agriculture. However, introducing dynamics and indivisibilities in MP models renders their solution computing time intensive. We present a...

This paper extends the existing literature on strategic R&D alliances by presenting a model of innovation networks with endogenous absorptive capacity. The networks emerge as a result of bilateral cooperation over time between firms occupying different locations in the knowledge space. Social...

We develop a simple agent-based financial market model in which heterogeneous speculators apply technical and fundamental analysis to trade in two different stock markets. Speculators’ strategy/market selections are repeated at each time step and depend on predisposition effects, herding...