1,721,065 research outputs found
Proximity Relations, Partnership Structure and Supporting Institutions in an Agent-Based Model of an Industrial District Prototype
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Why Bother with What Other Tell You? An Experimental Data-Driven Agent-Based Model
No full textThis paper investigates the relevance of reputation to improve the explorative capabilities of agents in uncertain environments. We have presented a laboratory experiment where sixty-four subjects were asked to take iterated economic investment decisions. An agent-based model based on their behavioural patterns replicated the experiment exactly. Exploring this experimentally grounded model, we studied the effects of various reputational mechanisms on explorative capabilities at a systemic level. The results showed that reputation mechanisms increase the agents' capability for coping with uncertain environments more than individualistic atomistic exploration strategies, although the former does entail a certain amount of false information inside the system
Adattamento tecnologico, relazioni fra imprese e istituzioni di supporto nei distretti industriali. Un modello di simulazione basata su agenti
No full textEconomic Performance, Inter-Firm Relations and Local Institutional Engineering in a Computational Prototype of Industrial Districts
Full text linkIndustrial districts can be conceived as complex systems characterised by a network of interactions amongst heterogeneous, localised, functionally, integrated and complementary firms. In a previous paper, we have introduced an industrial district computational prototype, showing that the economic performance of an industrial district proceeds to the form through which firms interact and co-ordinate each others. In this paper, we use such computational framework to experiment different options of local institutional engineering', trying to understand how specific supporting institutions' could perform macro-collective activities, such as, i.e., technology research, transfer and information, improving the technological adaptation of firms. Is a district more than a simple aggregation of localised firms? What can explain the economic performance of firms localised into the same space? Could some options of 'local institutional engineering, improve the performance of a district? Could such options set aside the problem of how firms dynamically interact? These are questions explored in this paper
Does Empirical Embeddedness Matter? Methodological Issues on Agent-Based Models for Analytical Social Science
Full text linkThe paper deals with the use of empirical data in social science agent-based models. Agent-based models are too often viewed just as highly abstract thought experiments conducted in artificial worlds, in which the purpose is to generate and not to test theoretical hypotheses in an empirical way. On the contrary, they should be viewed as models that need to be embedded into empirical data both to allow the calibration and the validation of their findings. As a consequence, the search for strategies to find and extract data from reality, and integrate agent-based models with other traditional empirical social science methods, such as qualitative, quantitative, experimental and participatory methods, becomes a fundamental step of the modelling process. The paper argues that the characteristics of the empirical target matter. According to characteristics of the target, ABMs can be differentiated into case-based models, typifications and theoretical abstractions. These differences pose different challenges for empirical data gathering, and imply the use of different validation strategies
Agentenbasierte Modelle in der Soziologie. Über die Integration von Empirie und Modellierung
No full textIndividual behavior and macro social properties. An agent based model
No full textThe paper aims at presenting an agent-based modeling exercise to illustrate how small differences in the cognitive properties of agents can generate very different macro social properties. We argue that it is not necessary to assume highly complicated cognitive architectures to introduce cognitive properties that matter for computational social science purposes. Our model is based on different simulation settings characterized by a gradual sophistication of behavior of agents, from simple heuristics to macro-micro feedback and other second-order properties. Agents are localized in a spatial interaction context. They have an individual task but are influenced by a collective coordination problem. The simulation results show that agents can generate efficiency at a macro level particularly when socio-cognitive sophistication of their behavior increase
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