This model analyzes two investors forming their expectations with heterogeneous strategies in order to optimize their portfolios by means of a Sharpe ratio maximization. Traders are distinguished according to their methodology used in forecasting. Two acknowledged algorithms of technical analysis have been implemented to compare portfolios performances and assess profitability of each technique.

An ABM, derived from a case study and a series of surveys with greenhouse growers in the Westland, Netherlands. Experiments using this model showshow that the greenhouse horticulture industry displays diversity, adaptive complexity and an uneven distribution, which all suggest that the industry is an evolving system.

The model demonstrates how non-instantaneous sampling techniques produce bias by overestimating the number of counted animals, when they move relative to the person counting them.

The Urban Traffic Simulator is an agent-based model developed in the Unity platform. The model allows the user to simulate several autonomous vehicles (AVs) and tune granular parameters such as vehicle downforce, adherence to speed limits, top speed in mph and mass. The model allows researchers to tune these parameters, run the simulator for a given period and export data from the model for analysis (an example is provided in Jupyter Notebook).

The data the model is currently able to output are the following:

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Implemented as a virtual laboratory, this model explores transitions in land-use and livelihood decisions that emerge from changing local and global conditions.

This study simulates the evolution of artificial economies in order to understand the tax relevance of administrative boundaries in the quality of life of its citizens. The modeling involves the construction of a computational algorithm, which includes citizens, bounded into families; firms and governments; all of them interacting in markets for goods, labor and real estate. The real estate market allows families to move to dwellings with higher quality or lower price when the families capitalize property values. The goods market allows consumers to search on a flexible number of firms choosing by price and proximity. The labor market entails a matching process between firms (given its location) and candidates, according to their qualification. The government may be configured into one, four or seven distinct sub-national governments, which are all economically conurbated. The role of government is to collect taxes on the value added of firms in its territory and invest the taxes into higher levels of quality of life for residents. The results suggest that the configuration of administrative boundaries is relevant to the levels of quality of life arising from the reversal of taxes. The model with seven regions is more dynamic, but more unequal and heterogeneous across regions. The simulation with only one region is more homogeneously poor. The study seeks to contribute to a theoretical and methodological framework as well as to describe, operationalize and test computer models of public finance analysis, with explicitly spatial and dynamic emphasis. Several alternatives of expansion of the model for future research are described. Moreover, this study adds to the existing literature in the realm of simple microeconomic computational models, specifying structural relationships between local governments and firms, consumers and dwellings mediated by distance.

Zooarchaeological evidences indicate that rabbit hunting became prevalent during the Upper Palaeolithic in the Iberian Peninsula.

The purpose of the ABM is to test if warren hunting using nets as a collective strategy can explain the introduction of rabbits in the human diet in the Iberian Peninsula during this period. It is analyzed whether this hunting strategy has an impact on human diet breadth by affecting the relative abundance of other main taxa in the dietary spectrum.
Model validity is measured by comparing simulated diet breadth to the observed diet breadth in the zooarchaeological record.

The agent-based model is explicitly grounded on the Diet Breadth Model (DBM), from the Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT).
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NetCommons simulates a social dilemma process in case of step-level public goods. Is possible to generate (or load from DL format) any different networks, to change initial parameters, to replicate a number of experimental situations, and to obtain a event history database in CSV format with information about the context of each agents’ decision, the individual behavior and the aggregate outcomes.

This model, realized on the NetLogo platform, compares utility levels at home and abroad to simulate agents’ migration and their eventual return. Our model is based on two fundamental individual features, i.e. risk aversion and initial expectation, which characterize the dynamics of different agents according to the evolution of their social contacts.

The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success. But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities) exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - often considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes. In a recent paper, with the help of this very simple agent-based model realized with NetLogo, we suggest that such an ingredient is just randomness. In particular, we show that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals. As to our knowledge, this counterintuitive result - although implicitly suggested between the lines in a vast literature - is quantified here for the first time. It sheds new light on the effectiveness of assessing merit on the basis of the reached level of success and underlines the risks of distributing excessive honors or resources to people who, at the end of the day, could have been simply luckier than others. With the help of this model, several policy hypotheses are also addressed and compared to show the most efficient strategies for public funding of research in order to improve meritocracy, diversity and innovation.