Agent-Based Methods in Economics and Finance Simulations in Swarm

This volume on financial and economic simulations in Swarmmarks the continued progress by a group of researchers to incorporateagent-based computer models as an important tool within theirdiscipline.Swarm promotes agent-based computer models as a tool for the study ofcomplex systems. A common "language" is leading to the growth ofuser communities in specific areas of application. Furthermore, byproviding an organizing framework to guide the development of moreproblem-specific structures, and by dealing with a whole range ofissues that affect their fundamental correctness and their ability tobe developed and reused, Swarm has sought to make the use ofagent-based models a legitimate tool of scientific investigation thatalso meets the practical needs of investigators within acommunity.Swarm's principal foundation is an object-oriented representation ofactive agents interacting among themselves and with their environment.To this base layer it adds its own structures to drive, record andportrait the events that occur across this world. The specificcontents of any world, however, are up to the experimenter to provide, either by building them from scratch or by tapping previouscontributions.This book is notable in assembling a rich array of such contributions, which are significant in their own right, but which can also be minedto extract the reusable elements in their respective areas of financeand economics. It also presents three interesting software additionswith tutorials in the form of simple financial and economicapplications. A Swarm meta-language closer to a natural language', the use of internet-augmented Swarm for experimental economics, and aSwarm visual builder will meet thechallenges launched by otheragent-based modelling competitors.The Swarm community at large can benefit greatly from the lead thatthe growing field of computational economics is taking to address itsown needs, as represented by th