Our societal belief systems are pruned by evolution, informing our unsustainable economies. This is one of a series of models exploring the dynamics of sustainable economics – PSoup, ModEco, EiLab, OamLab, MppLab, TpLab, CmLab.

Must tax-benefit policy making be limited to the ‘experts’?

The model simulates flood damages and its propagation through a cooperative, productive, farming system, characterized as a star-type network, where all elements in the system are connected one to each other through a central element.

To our knowledge, this is the first agent-based simulation of continuous-time PGGs (where participants can change contributions at any time) which are much harder to realise within both laboratory and simulation environments.

Work related to this simulation has been published in the following journal article:
Vu, Tuong Manh, Wagner, Christian and Siebers, Peer-Olaf (2019) ‘ABOOMS: Overcoming the Hurdles of Continuous-Time Public Goods Games with a Simulation-Based Approach’ Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 22 (2) 7 http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/22/2/7.html. doi: 10.18564/jasss.3995

Abstract:
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We study three obstacles of the expansion of contract rice farming in the Mekong Delta (MKD) region. The failure of buyers in building trust-based relationship with small-holder farmers, unattractive offered prices from the contract farming scheme, and limited rice processing capacity have constrained contractors from participating in the large-scale paddy field program. We present an agent-based model to examine the viability of contract farming in the region from the contractor perspective.

The model focuses on financial incentives and trust, which affect the decision of relevant parties on whether to participate and honor a contract. The model is also designed in the context of the MKD’s rice supply chain with two contractors engaging in the contract rice farming scheme alongside an open market, in which both parties can renege on the agreement. We then evaluate the contractors’ performances with different combinations of scenarios related to the three obstacles.

Our results firstly show that a fully-equipped contractor who opportunistically exploits a relatively small proportion (less than 10%) of the contracted farmers in most instances can outperform spot market-based contractors in terms of average profit achieved for each crop. Secondly, a committed contractor who offers lower purchasing prices than the most typical rate can obtain better earnings per ton of rice as well as higher profit per crop. However, those contractors in both cases could not enlarge their contract farming scheme, since either farmers’ trust toward them decreases gradually or their offers are unable to compete with the benefits from a competitor or the spot market. Thirdly, the results are also in agreement with the existing literature that the contract farming scheme is not a cost-effective method for buyers with limited rice processing capacity, which is a common situation among the contractors in the MKD region.

An agent-based model of individual consumers making choices between five possible diets: omnivore, flexitarian, pescatarian, vegetarian, or vegan. Each consumer makes decisions based on personal constraints and values, and their perceptions of how well each diet matches with those values. Consumers can also be influenced by each other’s perceptions via interaction across three social networks: household members, friends, and acquaintances.

This model simulates how the strategy one manages time affect the well-being that he/she can obtain.

The purpose of this model is to help understand how prehistoric societies adapted to the prehistoric American southwest landscape. In the American southwest there is a high degree of environmental var

We employ this spatially explicit agent-based model to begin to examine how time-averaging can affect the spatial scale of cultural similarity in archaeological assemblage data. The model was built to address this question: to what extent does time-averaging affect the scale of local spatial association in the relative frequency of the most prevalent cultural variant in an archaeological landscape?

This Netlogo replication of Kollman, K., J.H. Miller and S.E. Page (1997) Political Institutions and Sorting in a Tiebout Model, American Economic Review 87(5): 977-992. The model consists of of citizens who can vote for partie and move to other jurisdictions if they expect their preferences are better served. Parties adjust their positions to increase their share in the elections.