PLEASE NOTE (11 January 2002): This Econ 308x syllabus (Agent-Based Computational Economics) has been moved to a new site at http://www.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ308x/tesfatsion/syl308x.htm. All future updates to this syllabus will only be made at this new site.

Preliminary Syllabus for Econ 308x
Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE)

Course Offering: Spring 2002

Meeting Time and Place: TR 12:40-2, Heady 160

Last Updated:10 January 2002

Instructor:

Leigh Tesfatsion

Professor of Economics and Mathematics

Department of Economics

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa 50011-1070

http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/

tesfatsi@iastate.edu

Office Hours:

Heady 375, TR 2:10-3:40 and by appointment

Home Page for Econ 308x

ACE Website

Required Textbooks (Bookstore):

• David F. Batten, Discovering Artificial Economics: How Agents Learn and Economies Evolve, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2000, ISBN: 0-8133-9770-7.

• Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Back Together Again, MIT Press, Paperback Edition, 1998, ISBN: 0-262-53156-9.

Recommended Text (for Students Interested in Doing Some Original Programming as Part of Their Class Project):

• Matt Weisfeld, The Object-Oriented Thought Process, SAMS Publishing (Division of Macmillan), Indianapolis, Indiana, 2000, ISBN: 0-672-31853-9 (paperback).
  This book is designed to help newcomers to object-oriented programming (OOP) to learn guidelines for solid class design, to master the major concepts of inheritance, composition, interfaces, and abstract classes, and to create components to use in building more sophisticated systems. The author motivates and illustrates his points by taking readers step by step through a real-world application -- a simple e-commerce application framework using Java interfaces and abstract classes.

Course Activities:

• Instructor and student-moderated discussions of assigned readings and materials
• Survey and demonstrations of available computational tools suitable for ACE applications
• Hands-on experience using computational laboratories to conduct ACE experiments
• In-class presentations of student projects

Topic Coverage:

I. Introduction to Agent-Based Computational Economics

Required Readings:

• ** L. Tesfatsion, "Agent-Based Computational Economics: Growing Economies From the Bottom Up" (pdf,216K), Economics Working Paper No. 1, January 2002, to appear in Artificial Life, Volume 8, No. 1, 2002. HAND-OUT
• ** A. Clark (text), "Introduction" (pp. 1-9)
• ** D. Batten (text), Chapter 1: "Chance and Necessity" (pp. 1-43)

Other source materials

II. Learning and the Embodied Mind

Required Readings:

• ** D. Batten (text), Chapter 2: "On the Road to Know-Ware" (pp. 45-79)
• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 1: "Autonomous Agents: Walking on the Moon" (pp. 11-33)
• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 2: "The Situated Infant" (pp. 35-51)
• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 3: "Mind and World: The Plastic Frontier" (pp. 55-69)

Other source materials

III. Formation of Economic Networks

Required Readings:

• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 4: "Collective Wisdom, Slime-Mold Style" (pp. 71-84)
• ** D. Batten (text), Chapter 3: "Sheep, Explorers, and Phase Transitions" (pp. 81-115)
• ** D. Batten (text), Chapter 4: "The Ancient Art of Learning by Circulating" (pp. 117-138)

Other source materials

IV. Bottom-Up Modeling of Market Processes

Required Readings:

• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 5: "Evolving Robots" (pp. 87-102)
• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 9: "Minds and Markets" (pp. 179-192)
• ** A. Clark (text), Chapter 10: "Language, The Ultimate Artifact" (pp. 193-218)
• ** D. Batten (text), Chapter 7: "Coevolving Markets" (pp. 209-245)
• ** D. Batten (text), Chapter 8: "Artificial Economics" (pp. 247-268)
• ** M. Weisfeld, The Object-Oriented Thought Process, SAMS, Chapter 1: "Introduction to Object-Oriented Concepts" (pp. 8-31), HAND-OUT

Selected Illustrations (e.g., financial, ag/natural resources, labor, electricity, auctions,...)

Other source materials (edited volumes of readings)

V. Evolution of Market Protocols and Social Norms

Required readings (to be determined)

Other source materials

VI. Network, Path-Dependence, and Lock-In Effects in Economic Systems

Required readings (to be determined)

Other source materials

VII. ACE Laboratories for Design and Testing of Market Protocols and Agents

Required readings (to be determined)

Other source materials

VIII. Parallel Experiments with Real and Computational Economic Agents

Required readings (to be determined)

Other source materials

Possible Student Project Topic Areas:

• Learning and the Embodied Mind
• Evolution of Market Protocols and Social Norms
• Agricultural and Natural Resource Issues
• Financial Market Issues
• Labor Market Issues
• Restructured Electricity Markets
• Automated Markets, E-Commerce, and the "New Economy"
• Auction Markets
• The Microsoft Antitrust Case (Network, Path-Dependence, and Lock-In Effects)
• Small-World Networks
• Construction and Use of ACE Laboratories
• Parallel Experiments with Real and Computational Economic Agents

Copyright © 2002 Leigh Tesfatsion. All Rights Reserved.