ABSTRACT

Agent-based modeling is starting to crack problems that have resisted treatment by analytical methods. Many of these are in the physical and biological sciences, such as the growth of viruses in organisms, flocking and migration patterns, and models of neural interaction. In the social sciences, agent-based models have had success in such areas as modeling epidemics, traffic patterns, and the dynamics of battlefields. And in recent years, the methodology has begun to be applied to economics, simulating such phenomena as energy markets and the design of auctions. 1