The Economics of Vampires: An Agent-based Perspective

Dan Farhat ()
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Dan Farhat: Department of Economics, University of Otago, New Zealand

No 1301, Working Papers from University of Otago, Department of Economics

Abstract: Vampires are a prominent feature of modern culture. Past research identifies the ecological and economic relationship between vampires and living humans under the assumption that 'representative agents' are capable of characterising entire communities. Whether populations of individuals can coordinate themselves sufficiently or not to achieve the same outcomes as the representative agent is not addressed. The purpose of this study is to create a human-vampire ecosystem using artificial social simulation. An agent-based computational model is constructed in which heterogeneous vampire and human individuals engage in one-on-one interaction within a virtual landscape. These interactions result in the emergence of aggregate-level phenomena. Simulating alternative virtual economies under different model calibrations shows under what conditions these emergent phenomena are similar to those produced by the representative agents in previous studies. This article contends that growing human-vampire economies can shed light on an array of social and economic issues even if vampires never existed at all.

Keywords: economics of vampires; agent-based modelling; artificial social simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C63 J10 P0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2013-01, Revised 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.otago.ac.nz/economics/research/otago076635.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:otg:wpaper:1301

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