Evolution of the Week

Amy (Chen) Peng () and Francis McKenna ()
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Francis McKenna: Ontario Ministry of Finance, Toronto, Canada

No 12, Working Papers from Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provide an intuitive explanation of the emergence and evolution of the week based on a historical precedent draw from ancient Egypt. In this paper, we view the week as a coordinating social institution that was created to resolve a fundamental problem of society - coordinating market exchange. Artificial adaptive agents are used to simulate the interactions among farmers going to market. The results show that the length of the week that emerges depends on the chosen cost and benefit specifications and random interactions.

Keywords: social institution; coordination games; agent based models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 C63 D02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2009-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cmp and nep-evo
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rye:wpaper:wp012

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