Torino, 10-11 July, 2008
Economies can usefully be viewed as dynamic complex systems. Typically large numbers of agents engage repeatedly in local interactions, via an institutionalized interface set up as auction mechanisms, market makers, or network structures. These micro interactions, through instituted pathways, give rise to global regularities: in prices, interest rates, income distributions, patterns of trade and industry, and even employment and growth rates. These global regularities in turn feed back into the determination of local interactions. The result is an intricate system of evolving interdependent feedback loops, with multiplier and accelerator dynamics. Such autocatalytic propagation connects micro behaviors and global regularities, via market institutions and social conventions. This workshop will offer presentations from economists, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists who are attempting to simplify these propagation mechanisms into their essential parts. As opposed to adopting a specification of a single representative economic agent that is consistent with a predetermined equilibrium outcome, these presentations will support methods using a multi-agent system’s approach; their purpose is to inform and consolidate views among the participants who come from such widely diverse disciplinary fields. The goal of the workshop is to assist the development of multi-agent models that treat institutions and markets as evolving computational algorithms.