Equation-free analysis of agent-based models and systematic parameter determination

Spencer A. Thomas, David J.B. Lloyd and Anne C. Skeldon

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2016, vol. 464, issue C, 27-53

Abstract: Agent based models (ABM)s are increasingly used in social science, economics, mathematics, biology and computer science to describe time dependent systems in circumstances where a description in terms of equations is difficult. Yet few tools are currently available for the systematic analysis of ABM behaviour. Numerical continuation and bifurcation analysis is a well-established tool for the study of deterministic systems. Recently, equation-free (EF) methods have been developed to extend numerical continuation techniques to systems where the dynamics are described at a microscopic scale and continuation of a macroscopic property of the system is considered. To date, the practical use of EF methods has been limited by; (1) the over-head of application-specific implementation; (2) the laborious configuration of problem-specific parameters; and (3) large ensemble sizes (potentially) leading to computationally restrictive run-times.

Keywords: Equation free methods; Agent-based models; Numerical continuation; Stochastic systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:464:y:2016:i:c:p:27-53

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2016.07.043

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