Agent-based computational economics (ACE) combines elements from economics and computer science. In this article, the focus is on the relation between the evolutionary technique that is used and the economic problem that is modeled. In the field of ACE, economic simulations often derive parameter settings for the genetic algorithm directly from the values of the economic model parameters.This article compares two important approaches that are dominating in ACE and shows that the above practice may hinder the performance of the genetic algorithm and thereby hinder agent learning. More specifically, it is shown that economic model parameters and evolutionary algorithm parameters should be treated separately by comparing the two widely used approaches to social learning with respect to their convergence properties and robustness. This leads to new considerations for the methodological aspects of evolutionary algorithm design within the field of ACE.

Agent-based computational economics (ACE) combines elements from economics and computer science. In this paper, we focus on the relation between the evolutionary technique that is used and the economic problem that is modeled. In the field of ACE, economic simulations often derive parameter settings for the evolutionary algorithm directly from the values of the economic model parameters. In this paper, we compare two important approaches that are dominating ACE research and show that the above practice may hinder the performance of the evolutionary algorithm and thereby hinder agent learning. More specifically, we show that economic model parameters and evolutionary algorithm parameters should be treated separately by comparing the two widely used approaches to social learning with respect to their convergence properties and robustness. This leads to new considerations for the methodological aspects of evolutionary algorithm design within the field of ACE. Copyright Springer 2006evolutionary algorithms, simulation,

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Comparisons of various methods for solving stochastic control economic models can be done with Monte Carlo methods. These methods have been applied to simple one-state, one-control quadratic-linear tracking models; however, large outliers may occur in a substantial number of the Monte Carlo runs when certain parameter sets are used in these models. Building on the work of Mizrach (1991) and Kendrick (1994, 1995), this paper tracks the source of these outliers to two sources: (1) the use of a zero for the penalty weights on the control variables and (2) the generation of near-zero initial estimate of the control parameter in the systems equations by the Monte Carlo routine. This result leads to an understanding of why both the unsophisticated Optimal Feedback (Certainty Equivalence) and the sophisticated Dual methods do poorly in some Monte Carlo comparisons relative to the moderately sophisticated Expected Optimal Feedback method.