ACE News Notes: November 1998

News Notes for
Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE)
November 1998

Prepared by:: Leigh Tesfatsion; Department of Economics; Iowa State University; Ames, Iowa 50011-1070; http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/; tesfatsi@iastate.edu
ACE Web Site Address:: http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ace.htm

Appended below are news items that may be of interest to researchers interested in agent-based computational economics (ACE), the computational study of economies modelled as evolving decentralized systems of autonomous interacting agents. Items of more permanent interest will be retained at the ACE Web site.

ACE news notes are anticipated about once every two months during the regular academic year (September-May) but may be distributed more or less often as warranted by the amount of news. Please contact Leigh Tesfatsion (tesfatsi@iastate.edu) if you wish to be added or removed from this news list, or if you have any news items you wish to have included in the next ACE news notes. Please do **NOT** use the list address.

Thank you.

News Items

1. ACE One of Nine Special Interest Groups under SCE Umbrella

The Society of Computational Economics (SCE) now highlights nine special interest groups (SIGs) on the SCE home page at http://econwpa.wustl.edu/sce/. These nine SIGs are: agent-based computational economics (ACE); computational econometrics and statistics; computational finance; computational macro modelling; computational political economy; economic dynamics; internet economics; programming languages; and teaching methods for computational economics. Web sites are either under construction or in operation for many of these SIGs whose purpose will be to provide an entry point where interested researchers new to the SIG area can find pointers to relevant and useful resource materials. Overlap among the SIGs will be handled by appropriate cross-referencing of sites.

2. 1998-99 SCE Graduate Student Prize in Computational Economics

The Society of Computational Economics (SCE) announces its sponsorship of its second annual contest for outstanding research manuscripts in computational economics written by graduate students. The contest is open to graduate students worldwide working on any aspect of computational economics. Up to three prizes will be awarded, each for $1000. Manuscript submissions must be received by March 1, 1999. For more information, visit the SCE Web site at http://wuecon.wustl.edu/sce.

3. Address Change For Al Roth's Web Site

Al Roth's Game Theory and Experimental Economics Page has moved (along with Al Roth) to Harvard University. The new Web site address is http://www.economics.harvard.edu/~aroth/alroth.html.

4. A New Game Theory Society

An international society for the advancement of game theory and its applications, to be called the Game Theory Society, is slated to begin operations on January 1, 1999. The society will have two official journals, Games and Economic Behavior and the International Journal of Game Theory, which will be available to members as privileges of membership.

For 1999, regular membership dues will be approximately $75, with reduced rates being available for students, people from lesser developed countries, and people who do not want the full subscription to both journals. Initial officers of the society are: Robert J. Aumann, President; Ehud Kalai, Executive Vice President; and Eric van Damme, Secretary and Treasurer. For more information and for enrollment forms, please see the Game Theory Society Web site at http://cwis.kub.nl/~few5/center/staff/vdamme/gt.htm.

5. Call for Beta Testing of an Evolutionary-Oriented Game Theory Text

Herbert Gintis (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A.) is in the final stages of preparation of a game theory text entitled Game Theory Evolving, to be published by Princeton University Press in 1999. The text is strongly problem-oriented, stresses evolutionary dynamics, covers biology as well as economics, and uses artificial life simulations to highlight the low rationality aspect of game dynamics and to emphasize the need for better models of the individual actor, given the anomalies in the predictions of the traditional model of the rational actor uncovered in laboratory experiments in dictator, trust, ultimatum, bargaining, common pool resource, and other games. The text is stand-alone for graduate students, but contains many examples that would be useful for undergraduate courses as well.

Gintis would like people to beta test the material, if they are so inclined. To this end, he has made chapters of the text available at his Web site at

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis

in hopes of getting feedback from interested users by email or by letter. He is especially interested in three issues: (a) are there mistakes in the text; (b) are there ways to improve the formulation of a problem or issue; and (c) has he given proper attribution to authors for particular problems that he has adapted from published sources.

6. Workshop on Agent-Based Modeling of Financial Markets

The First Workshop on Agent-based Modeling of Financial Markets was held on November 17, 1998 in Washington, DC, organized by Michael de la Maza and other members of the Redfire Capital Management Group (Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.). Approximately thirty people listened to talks given by four speakers: Blake LeBaron of Brandeis University, Thor Sigvaldason and Bernhard Borges of PricewaterhouseCoopers, David Collings of BT Labs, and Richard Pryor of Sandia National Laboratories. Following the invited talks, the audience engaged in a discussion about the future role of agent-based methods in understanding financial markets. For more information about this workshop, contact the Redfire Capital Management Group at RedfireGrp@aol.com.

Book Announcements

Note: The following book announcements have been incorporated into the syllabus of readings linked to the ACE Web site home page; links to publishers (for ordering purposes) can be found on the journals/publishers page linked to the ACE Web site home page.

Kenneth L. Judd, Numerical Methods in Economics, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, c. 1998, 622 pp., ISBN 0-262-10071-1.
From the publisher: "Advances in computer technology and computational methods have made possible serious empirical analysis of large data sets, as well as the application of computer-intensive statistical methods. In order to harness the full power of this technology, economists need to understand and use a broad range of mathematical techniques. In this new text, Kenneth Judd introduces students to critically important numerical methods and shows how to use them in economic analyses."
Chapter topics include: basic numerical analysis on Euclidean n-space; numerical methods for functional problems; perturbation methods; and applications to dynamic equilibrium analysis. A Web site is currently under construction at http://bucky.stanford.edu/numericalmethods/. that will provide various supporting materials for users of Judd's text.
Judd is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University.

Herbert A. Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality, Volume 3: Empirically Grounded Economic Reason, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, c. 1997, 336 pp., ISBN: 0-262-19372-8.
From the publisher: "Throughout Herbert Simon's wide-ranging career his central aim has been to explain the nature of the thought processes that people use in making decisions. The third volume of Simon's collected papers ... (brings) together work on this and other economics-related topics that have occupied his attention in the 1980s and 1990s: how to represent causal ordering formally in dynamic systems, the implications for society of new electronic information systems, employee and managerial motivation in the business firm (specifically the implications for economics of the propensity of human beings to identify with the goals of the organization), and the state of economics itself."

Frank Schweitzer and Gerald Silverberg (eds.), Evolution and Self-Organization in Economics, Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1998, ISBN 3-428-09608-8.
From the editors: "(This book) includes (among others) review articles about modelling complex economic evolution, especially with respect to simulation methodology and agent-based computational economics models."
A complete table of contents for the book can be found at http://summa.physik.hu-berlin.de:80/~frank/books.html. Schweitzer is currently at the Institute of Physics, Humboldt University, Berlin. Silverberg is at MERIT, Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Frank Schweitzer (ed.), Self-Organization of Complex Structures: From Individual to Collective Dynamics, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, c. 1997, 596 pp., ISBN: 90-5699-027-6.
From the editor: "The collection of articles found in (this) book aims to link the discussion about complex phenomena in natural sciences, such as physics and biology, to those in life sciences, such as sociology, economics, and regional planning. The book contains a wide range of applications in the evolving field of self-organization and complexity theory..."
A complete table of contents for the book can be found at http://summa.physik.hu-berlin.de:80/~frank/books.html." Schweitzer is currently at the Institute of Physics, Humboldt University, Berlin.

John H. Holland, Emergence: From Chaos to Order, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, California, 1998, ISBN 0-201-14943-5.
The basic objective of this book is to characterize the conditions for emergence and in this way provide a definition for the term. An extensive review of this book by Tony Curzon Price (University College London) appears in Volume 1, Issue 4, of the online Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), available at http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/.

Stephen J. Read and Lynn C. Miller (eds.), Connectionist Models of Social Reasoning and Social Behavior, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahway, New Jersey, 1998, ISBN 0-8058-2216-X.
This collection of readings focuses on a variety of topics related to the connectionist modelling of social systems, e.g., why connectionist models provide useful tools for interpreting the experimental findings of social psychology. Deborah Vakas-Duong (Agent-Based Learning Systems, Annandale, Virginia) provides a detailed critique of this book in particular and the epistemology of social simulation in general in Volume 1, Issue 4, of the online Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), available at http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/.

Robert Trappl and Paolo Petta (eds.), Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors: Towards Autonomous Personality Agents, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1997, ISBN 3-540-62735-9.
This collection of readings is devoted to the implementation and study of personality and character traits in synthetic actors. Applications range from animations for entertainment to systematic attempts to understand the origins and functions of sentiment and emotion in humans. A critical review of this book by Rosaria Conte (IP/CNR, Rome) appears in Volume 1, Issue 4 of the online Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), available at http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/.

Journal Announcements

Note: Pointers to new journals listed below have been incorporated into the journals/publishers page linked to the ACE Web site home page.

Reminder: Special ACE Issues of Computational Economics and the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control
Papers on ACE-related topics are solicited for possible inclusion in a special ACE issue of Computational Economics and for a special ACE issue of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (Section A: Computational Methods in Economics and Finance). Each submitted paper should address a clearly defined issue of economic interest from an agent-based perspective. The deadline for receipt of paper submissions is July 30, 1999; all papers will be refereed. Two hard copies of each submitted paper should be sent by July 30, 1999, to the guest editor: Leigh Tesfatsion, Department of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1070, U.S.A.
Additional information about the two special ACE journal issues, including detailed guidelines for paper submissions, can be obtained at http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/acespec.htm

New Issue Available Online for the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS)
The fourth and final issue of Volume 1 of the online journal JASSS is now available at the JASSS Web site at http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/. In addition to an unusually detailed collection of book reviews (see above), the issue includes refereed articles by Scott Moss, by David Hales, and by Rafael Bordini, John Campbell and Renata Vieira. Submissions for the next issue, which will be published in January 1999, are welcome. For more information, visit the JASSS Web site.

New Journal Announcement: Netnomics
A new peer-reviewed journal, Netnomics: Computer Networking and Economics, edited by Hans Amman (Department of Economics, University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute, the Netherlands), is being published by Baltzer Science Publishers.
Paraphrased introduction from the Editor: As electronic networking grows in importance, it will create new opportunities for economic research. The availability of economic data at a micro and macro level, both in real time and online, will make it possible to test economic issues and economic theory that are not currently possible to test. As more and more transactions are carried out electronically, new economic issues and problems will start to arise. In the longer run we may see that a networked real-time macroeconomy will emerge with its own set of economic characteristics. The new journal Netnomics is intended to be an outlet for research in this emerging field of economics. The first issue is planned for Spring 1999. Topics that could be addressed by the journal in the immediate future are: pricing schemes for electronic services; electronic trading systems; data mining and high frequency data; real time forecasting and filtering; economic software agents; distributed database applications; digi-ecash systems; and many more.
Electronic submissions are encouraged in (La)TeX or other formats, by email or through anonymous ftp at ftp://ftp.baltzer.nl, directory incoming/netnomics. For additional information about this new journal, contact the editor Hans Amman at amman@fee.uva.nl.

New Journal Announcement: International Game Theory Review
A new refereed quarterly journal, International Game Theory Review (IGTR), has recently been established by World Scientific. The editors are David W. K. Yeung (Managing Editor, School of Economics and Finance, University of Hong Kong), Steffen Jorgensen (Department of Management, Odense University, Denmark), and Leon Petrosjan (Faculty of Applied Mathematics, St. Petersburg State University, Russia).
From the publisher: "IGTR emphasizes rigorous analysis, and will offer up-to-date insights and perspectives through original research in game theory and its applications. It welcomes game-oriented papers from all fields of study. IGTR will publish both original articles and state-of-the-art surveys, and will seek to maintain a balanced orientation between game-theoretic modeling and practical implications. Theoretical significance as well as empirical relevance are key criteria for acceptance of an article, and IGTR will be accessible to readers from a wide range of disciplines."
For further information about this new journal, visit the home page of World Scientific at http://www.wspc.com.

Additional ACE-Related Web Sites

Note: Pointers to the following Web sites have been incorporated into the "other ACE-related Web sites" page linked to the ACE Web site home page.

Nelson and Winter (1982) Model in Java
The Nelson and Winter (1982) Model Web site at http://cournot.u-strasbg.fr/yildi/NelWin.htm, maintained by Murat Yildizoglu (University of Strasbourg), provides a Java applet that implements the basic industry dynamics model of Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter (An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Harvard University Press, 1982). The purpose of this student-oriented site is to permit interested parties to experiment with the model and acquire an introduction to basic evolutionary dynamics.

Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition
The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition is directed by Prof. Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer (Max Planck Institute, Berlin), one of the most well-known and articulate critics of the model of the perfectly rational human being claimed to be implicit in the work of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and other researchers investigating perceived anomalies in experimentally observed human decision making under uncertainty.
From the Center's Web site: "The Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) is focused on the discovery and study of the simple cognitive `satisficing' algorithms that people use to solve adaptive problems in specific real-world domains, like avoiding dangers, choosing mates, and investing in offspring. ABC takes an evolutionarily-inspired view of the mind as a collection of these task-specific algorithms and modules, rather than as a general-purpose problem solver. In the past, studies of human rationality have relegated the human mind to the status of a more or less flawed logical or probabilistic reasoner. In contrast, the ABC program investigates how our cognitive abilities may be highly tuned to the problems they must solve..."
For more information about this research group, visit the ABC Web site at http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/Abc/.

Evolving Artificial Moral Ecologies
A Web site on Evolving Artificial Moral Ecologies (EAME) is maintained by Peter Danielson and Chris MacDonald (Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia) at http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/eame/eame-desc.html. From the Web site introduction: "EAME differs from previous approaches to participatory environmental modelling in three respects. First, our models include explicitly moral elements... So one can raise questions like: what kinds of resources will selfish agents exhaust? Will altruistic agents do likewise? How about promise (or social contract) keeping agents? ... Second, we use our recent research in rationality, evolution, and moral theory to focus on populations with varied ethical perspectives and differing local conditions. ... Third, EAME's graphic interface eases access by visualizing complex phenomena, and networking via the World Wide Web makes EAME into a collaborative experiment in environmental ethics."

Conference Information

Note: The following announcements have been incorporated into the conference page linked to the ACE Web site home page.

Call for Papers for the 4th Workshop on Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (WEHIA-99)
Papers are solicited for the 4th Workshop on Economics with Heterogenous Interacting Agents (WEHIA-99) to be held 4-5 June, 1999 in Genoa, Italy. WEHIA-99 offers an opportunity to present the latest research on the representation of the economy as a complex system made up of multiple heterogeneous interacting agents. Research from various domains - statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, learning, the theory of self- organizing systems, econometrics and macroeconomic theory - is called into play. Papers presenting analysis of empirical data are welcome.
The deadline for paper submissions is February 20, 1999. Additional information about WEHIA-99 can be obtained at the symposium Web site at http://www.econ.unian.it/dipartimento/siec/call.html.

CEF99 Call for Papers for a Special Session on Estimating and Simulating Models with Explicit Expectations
Papers are solicited on the estimation, use, and validation of models with explicit expectations for a special session, "Issues in Estimating and Simulating Models with Explicit Expectations," to be included in the program of the 1999 International Conference of the Society for Computational Economics on Computing in Economics and Finance (CEF99) to be held at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A., June 24-6, 1999. Authors wishing to present a paper in this special session are invited to submit an abstract (not more than two pages) by January 15, 1999. Submissions may be in either hard copy or electronic form. Please send e-mail abstracts (ASCII or LaTeX preferred) to Sharon Kozicki (skozicki@frbkc.org), Michael Binder (binder@glue.umd.edu), or Peter Tinsley (ptinsley@econ.cam.ac.uk).
General CEF99 conference information can be obtained at the CEF99 Web site at http://fmwww.bc.edu/cef99/.

CEF99 Call for Papers for a Special Session on Evolutionary Computation in Economics and Finance
Papers are solicited for a special session, "Evolutionary Computation in Economics and Finance," to be included in the program of the 1999 International Conference of the Society for Computational Economics on Computing in Economics and Finance (CEF99) to be held at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A., June 24-6, 1999. Papers addressing novel applications of genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary programming, and evolutionary artificial neural nets to economics, game theory and finance are all welcome; the deadline for paper submissions is January 15, 1999. Papers presented at this special session will be refereed for possible inclusion in a volume entitled Evolutionary Computation in Economics and Finance, to be published by Springer-Verlag.
Interested participants can obtain more information about this special session, including submission details, at http://econo.nccu.edu.tw/ai/conference/CEF99.htm.

CEF99 Call for Papers for Special Sessions on Economic Dynamics
Papers are solicited for special sessions on "Economic Dynamics" to be included in the program of the 1999 International Conference of the Society for Computational Economics on Computing in Economics and Finance (CEF99) to be held at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.A., June 24-6, 1999. To provide some examples, Economic Dynamic sessions in previous years have covered topics such as macroeconomic dynamics, bounded rationality and learning, rational expectations models, economic growth, dynamic economic modeling, innovation and pricing, economic dynamics and adjustment costs and macroeconomic policymaking.
If you would like to participate in these sessions, please send an abstract by December 31, 1998, to one of the following email addresses: Volker Wieland (Federal Reserve Board, vwieland@frb.gov); Emilio Barucci (University of Florence, barucci@stat.ds.unifi.it); or Theo Eicher (University of Washington, Seattle, te@u.washington.edu).

Fourth International Conference on GeoComputation
The Fourth International Conference on GeoComputation will be held at Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia, U.S.A, 25-28 July 1999.
GeoComputation 99 focuses on a range of computational research relating to geographic form, dynamics, and interaction. As such, it draws from a range of disciplines, including geography, computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, statistics, remote sensing, and visualization. Specific areas of interest include, but are not restricted to: artificial intelligence (expert systems, neural and fuzzy modeling); visualization, virtual reality, and multimedia; process-based modeling; macro-modeling, micro-modeling, and scaling; and developing distributed computing environments for geographical data processing.
Additional information about GeoComputation 99 can be obtained at the conference Web site at http://206.37.29.157/GeoComp99/.

Reminder: Items Requested for ACE News Notes and Complexity

Just a reminder that if you have any ACE-related news items, or any information about ACE-related teaching materials, software, books, articles, journals, or conferences that you would like to have considered for inclusion in the ACE news notes, and/or the Complexity-at-Large section of the John Wiley journal Complexity, please email them to me (along with Web site information if available) at the following address: tesfatsi@iastate.edu.

News Notes for Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) November 1998