The Agora

The Agora, is a economics simulation environment, for studying such phenomena as the emergence of money from a barter economy. The Agora is written in Smalltalk by KevinLacobie.

See Computational Modeling of Social Learning Project Report for sample results.

From the introduction of this paper we learn ...

The purpose of this project is to create a "primordial soup" with only a few fixed parameters from which economic behavior may emerge. Agents learn what to produce, who to trade with, what to trade and how much all at the same time. Knowledge of any of these enables knowledge of the others, so that division of labor, money, social networks of trade, ideal types, prices and production efforts all push each other in positive feedback, just as the first life self-organized. As these things push each other, society goes through stages from individual production of most needs to barter of a few goods, to barter of many as their trade networks mature. The fuel behind this self organization is not natural selection, but symbolic interactionism. As agents read and display signs, the structures of society unfold. They socially construct their world through their schema: through self-fulfilling prophecy they form ideal types. Even though natural selection was used as the inductive method on a lower level of description, the higher level symbolic interactionism is a method of self organization which is distinct from natural selection, is more cooperative does not depend on death.