Wider issues of the validation of computational models - ascertaining that they are sound and consistent relative to some logical formalism and/or substantive theory - have not been a subject of the management science literature. In this paper, we demonstrate that computational models can be...

Agents that act as information brokers in large distributed systems (such as the internet) lower the cost of obtaining information. Agents have direct access to only a small part of such systems at any one time. This paper investigates the conditions in which agents successfully go through other...

Brian Arthur's `El Farol Bar' model is extended so that the agents also learn and communicate. The learning and communication is implemented using an evolutionary process acting upon a population of mental models inside each agent. The evolutionary process is based on a Genetic Programming...

The reductionist/holist debate seems an impoverished one, with many participants appearing to adopt a position first and constructing rationalisations second. Here I propose an intermediate position of pragmatic holism, that irrespective of whether all natural systems are theoretically...

It is argued that the credible modelling of economic agents from a bounded rationality perspective, implies a certain difference of approach from those involved in designing agents for a specific task or environment. Some of the ramifications of this are that learning in the resulting models can...

It is argued that complexity has only a limited use as a paradigm against reductionist approaches and that it has a much richer potential as a comparable property. What can complexity be usefully said to be a property of is discussed. It is argued that it is unlikely to have any useful value as...