Agent-based Computational Economics

Agent-based computation economics is being offered for the second time in Spring 2008 as Eco 320V - Computable Economics. The course should have been more aptly named agent-based computational economics.

Prof. Leigh Tesfatsion at Iowa State has the best site on the web for economists concerning ACE. Her site is incredibly thorough and helpful to anyone interested in the topic. In July 2006 I participated in the CEEL Summer School: An Intensive Course in Agent-based Computational Economics led by Prof. Tesfatsion and Prof. Robert Axtell. Prof. Axel Leijonhufvud is the program director for these excellent CEEL summer schools held at the University of Trento. If next year's topic interests you, I definitely suggest applying.

Useful Sites

Tesfatsion's ACE Site

The definitive collection of materials related to ACE. A must visit for anyone interested in what is being done and what is available. The site includes self-study courses in ACE and in the computational tools.

NetLogo

A very good tool for getting into ACE and agent-based modeling; particularly if you have little or no programming experience.

RePast

One of many good tools (see Tesfatsion's site for a more thorough list) for developing agent-based models. RePast is open-source and available for both Java and C.

Mason

Another of the many good open-source tools which is also Java based.