Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Modelleing trade environment

[Steve Railsback]

Martijn Haarman wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I'm currently up to building a simulation of a game called
> Trust&Tracing game. It's a game in which players trade goods of high
> and low quality through a chain (producers, middlemen, retailers,
> consumers). Sellers can decide to sell a low-qual. product as a high
> qual. product. Buyers can decide to trace a products origin (i.e.
> what's that real quality of a product) Whether a seller has proved to
> be honest and thruthfull in the past influences the buyers' trust.
> I think of simulating the game with a multi agent system (trade agent
> with roles of producers, iddlemen, retailers, consumers) with
> configurable properties like trade targets et cetera. My eye fell onto
> Swarm as it seems quite "managable" for me. Can you tell me whether
> Swarm would be a good environment to build this? Or else what
> alternatives I could try?

Have you looked at Dr. Leigh Testfatsion's site on agent-based
economics? You will find some examples that should help you understand
some ways to do the modeling, what has already been done, etc.
http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ace.htm

Swarm of course was designed to allow people like you to build whatever
kind of agent-based model you want. However, your project sounds pretty
complex, so you might best spend some time seeing if someone has already
written software that does some of the specific things your model needs.
Dr. Testfatsion's site is one place to look; also look at the RePast
project at University of Chicago.

Maybe other people on the list can point you to projects addressing some
aspects of yours.

Steve R. 

-- 
Lang Railsback & Assoc.
250 California Ave.
Arcata CA  USA 95521
707-822-0453; fax 822-1868