Heuristic learning and the discovery of specialization and exchange

Authored by Erik O. Kimbrough

Date Published: 2011-04

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2010.10.002

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: R

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Pseudocode

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

I develop and calibrate an agent-based model of boundedly rational, adaptive agents in a two-good production and exchange economy to replicate human-subject outcomes in the same eight-person experimental economy. To test agents' ability to capture human behavior. I extend the model and use its output to make predictions about a second experimental environment in which the group of eight agents is slowly constructed by merging smaller groups. This environment improves human-subject performance in the specialization and exchange task, and commensurate improvement emerges for some parameterizations of the agent-based model. This iterative process yields incremental improvement of decision-level theories about economic discovery. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Tags

exchange Agent-based modeling Specialization experimental economics