Model Building and Description Using the Agent-based Computational Economics Framework for Accounting

Abstract

Agent-based computational economics has been attracting attention as a method in recent years; however, its model structures tend to become complex due to the coexistence of systems for decision-making and those involved in financial transactions. This means that a large amount of effort is required at each stage of the research. This study uses accounting-related concepts to develop a framework that extends bookkeeping notation and functionality to express the relationships between monetary entities in the model, which improves the working efficiency of Agentbased computational economics research. A case study of actual model construction is presented. The introduction of accounting-related systems can enable the separation of decision-making interaction systems from those involved in financial transactions to clearly express without misinterpretation, and "who performs what actions to whom and how such actions affect the state variables of each entity." This improves the effectiveness of the model design, programming, and simulation phases and enables descriptions that are less likely to be misinterpreted by the reader when the results are published.