This model has been developed together with the publication ‘Modelling Value Change - An Exploratory Approach’

Value change and moral change have increasingly become topics of interest in the philosophical literature. Several theoretical accounts have been proposed. Such accounts are usually based on certain theoretical and conceptual assumptions and their strengths and weaknesses are often hard to determine and compare, also because they are based on limited empirical evidence.

We propose that a step forward can be made with the help of agent-based modelling (ABM). ABM can be used to investigate whether a simulation model based on a specific account of value change can reproduce relevant phenomena. To illustrate this approach, we built a model based on the pragmatist account of value change proposed in van de Poel and Kudina (2022). We show that this model can reproduce four relevant phenomena, namely 1) the inevitability and stability of values, 2) how different societies may react differently to external shocks, 3) moral revolutions, and 4) lock-in.

Large outbreaks of Shigella sonnei among children in Haredi Jewish (ultra-Orthodox) communities in Brooklyn, New York have occurred every 3–5 years since at least the mid-1980s. These outbreaks are partially attributable to large numbers of young children in these communities, with transmission highest in child care and school settings, and secondary transmission within households. As these outbreaks have been prolonged and difficult to control, we developed an agent-based model of shigellosis transmission among children in these communities to support New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene staff. Simulated children were assigned an initial susceptible, infectious, or recovered (immune) status and interacted and moved between their home, child care program or school, and a community site. We calibrated the model according to observed case counts as reported to the Health Department. Our goal was to better understand the efficacy of existing interventions and whether limited outreach resources could be focused more effectively.

This model examines how financial and social top-down interventions interplay with the internal self-organizing dynamics of a fishing community. The aim is to transform from hierarchical fishbuyer-fisher relationship into fishing cooperatives.

The goal of the AG-Innovation agent-based model is to explore and compare the effects of two alternative mechanisms of innovation development and diffusion (exogenous, linear and endogenous, non-linear) on emergent properties of food and income distribution and adoption rates of different innovations. The model also assesses the range of conditions under which these two alternative mechanisms would be effective in improving food security and income inequality outcomes. Our modelling questions were: i) How do cross-scalar social-ecological interactions within agricultural innovation systems affect system outcomes of food security and income inequality? ii) Do foreign aid-driven exogenous innovation perpetuate income inequality and food insecurity and if so, under which conditions? iii) Do community-driven endogenous innovations improve food security and income inequality and if so, under which conditions? The Ag-Innovation model is intended to serve as a thinking tool for for the development and testing of hypotheses, generating an understanding of the behavior of agricultural innovation systems, and identifying conditions under which alternated innovation mechanisms would improve food security and income inequality outcomes.

What is it?

This model demonstrates a very simple bidding market where buyers try to acquire a desired item at the best price in a competitive environment

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The goal of the paper is to propose an abstract but formalised model of how Schwartz higher order values may influence individual decisions on sharing an individual effort among alternative economic activities. Subsequently, individual decisions are aggregated into the total (collective) economic output, taking into account interactions between the agents. In particular, we explore the relationship between individual higher order values: Self–Enhancement, Self–Transcendence, Openness to Change, and Conservation – measured according to Schwartz’s universal human values theory – and individual and collective economic performance, by means of a theoretical agent based model. Furthermore, based on empirical observations, Openness to Change (measured by the population average in the case of collective output) is positively associated with individual and collective output. These relations are negative for Conservation. Self-Enhancement is positively associated with individual output but negatively with collective output. In case of Self–Transcendence, this effect is opposite. The model provides the potential explanations, in terms of individual and population differences in: propensity for management, willingness to change, and skills (measured by an educational level) for the empirically observed relations between Schwartz higher order values and individual and collective output. We directly calibrate the micro–level of the model using data from the ninth round of the European Social Survey (ESS9) and present the results of numerical simulations.

We present a socio-epistemic model of science inspired by the existing literature on opinion dynamics. In this model, we embed the agents (or scientists) into social networks - e.g., we link those who work in the same institutions. And we place them into a regular lattice - each representing a unique mental model. Thus, the global environment describes networks of concepts connected based on their similarity. For instance, we may interpret the neighbor lattices as two equivalent models, except one does not include a causal path between two variables.

Agents interact with one another and move across the epistemic lattices. In other words, we allow the agents to explore or travel across the mental models. However, we constrain their movements based on absorptive capacity and cognitive coherence. Namely, in each round, an agent picks a focal point - e.g., one of their colleagues - and will move towards it. But the agents’ ability to move and speed depends on how far apart they are from the focal point - and if their new position is cognitive/logic consistent.

Therefore, we propose an analytical model that examines the connection between agents’ accumulated knowledge, social learning, and the span of attitudes towards mental models in an artificial society. While we rely on the example from the General Theory of Relativity renaissance, our goal is to observe what determines the creation and diffusion of mental models. We offer quantitative and inductive research, which collects data from an artificial environment to elaborate generalized theories about the evolution of science.

An agent-based framework that aggregates social network-level individual interactions to run targeting and rewarding programs for a freemium social app. Git source code in https://bitbucket.org/mchserrano/socialdynamicsfreemiumapps

The basic premise of the model is to simulate several ‘agents’ going through build-buy cycles: Build: Factories follow simple rules of strategy in the allocation of resources between making exploration and exploitation type products. Buy: Each of two types of Consumers, early-adopters and late adopters, follow simple purchase decision rules in deciding to purchase a product from one of two randomly chosen factories. Thus, the two working ‘agents’ of the model are ‘factories’ and […]

Must tax-benefit policy making be limited to the ‘experts’?