FIsheries Simulation with Human COmplex DEcision-making (FISHCODE) is an agent-based model to depict and analyze current and future spatio-temporal dynamics of three German fishing fleets in the southern North Sea. Every agent (fishing vessel) makes daily decisions about if, what, and how long to fish. Weather, fuel and fish prices, as well as the actions of their colleagues influence agents’ decisions. To combine behavioral theories and enable agents to make dynamic decision, we implemented the Consumat approach, a framework in which agents’ decisions vary in complexity and social engagement depending on their satisfaction and uncertainty. Every agent has three satisfactions and two uncertainties representing different behavioral aspects, i.e. habitual behavior, profit maximization, competition, conformism, and planning insecurity. Availability of extensive information on fishing trips allowed us to parameterize many model parameters directly from data, while others were calibrated using pattern oriented modelling. Model validation showed that spatial and temporal aggregated ABM outputs were in realistic ranges when compared to observed data. Our ABM hence represents a tool to assess the impact of the ever growing challenges to North Sea fisheries and provides insight into fisher behavior beyond profit maximization.

Due to the role of education in promoting social status and facilitating upward social mobility, individuals and their families spare no effort to pursue better educational opportunities, especially in countries where education is highly competitive.

In China, the enrollment of senior high schools and universities mainly follows a ranking system based on students’ scores in national entrance exams (Zhongkao and Gaokao). Typically, students with higher scores have priority in choosing schools and endeavor to get into better senior high schools to increase their chances of entering a prestigious university.

However, students can only select “better” senior high schools based on their average Gaokao grades, which are strongly influenced by the initial performance (Zhongkao grades) of enrolled students. The true quality indicator of school education (schooling effect, defined as the grade improvement achieved through education at the senior high school) is unknowable. This raises the first question: will school rankings reflect the real educational quality of schools over decades of educational competition, or merely the initial quality of the students they enroll?

…

Viable North Sea (ViNoS) is an Agent-based Model of the German North Sea Small-scale Fisheries in a Social-Ecological Systems framework focussing on the adaptive behaviour of fishers facing regulatory, economic, and resource changes. Small-scale fisheries are an important part both of the cultural perception of the German North Sea coast and of its fishing industry. These fisheries are typically family-run operations that use smaller boats and traditional fishing methods to catch a variety of bottom-dwelling species, including plaice, sole, and brown shrimp. Fisheries in the North Sea face area competition with other uses of the sea – long practiced ones like shipping, gas exploration and sand extractions, and currently increasing ones like marine protection and offshore wind farming. German authorities have just released a new maritime spatial plan implementing the need for 30% of protection areas demanded by the United Nations High Seas Treaty and aiming at up to 70 GW of offshore wind power generation by 2045. Fisheries in the North Sea also have to adjust to the northward migration of their established resources following the climate heating of the water. And they have to re-evaluate their economic balance by figuring in the foreseeable rise in oil price and the need for re-investing into their aged fleet.

Country-by-Country Reporting and Automatic Exchange of Information have recently been implemented in European Union (EU) countries. These international tax reforms increase tax compliance in the short term. In the long run, however, taxpayers will continue looking abroad to avoid taxation and, countries, looking for additional revenues, will provide opportunities. As a result, tax competition intensifies and the initial increase in compliance could reverse. To avoid international tax reforms being counteracted by tax competition, this paper suggests bilateral responsive regulation to maximize compliance. This implies that countries would use different tax policy instruments toward other countries, including tax and secrecy havens.

To assess the effectiveness of fully or partially enforce tax policies, this agent based model has been ran many times under different enforcement rules, which influence the perceived enforced- and voluntary compliance, as the slippery-slope model prescribes. Based on the dynamics of this perception and the extent to which agents influence each other, the annual amounts of tax evasion, tax avoidance and taxes paid are calculated over longer periods of time.

The agent-based simulation finds that a differentiated policy response could increase tax compliance by 6.54 percent, which translates into an annual increase of €105 billion in EU tax revenues on income, profits, and capital gains. Corporate income tax revenues in France, Spain, and the UK alone would already account for €35 billion.

This is a generic sub-model of animal territory formation. It is meant to be a reusable building block, but not in the plug-and-play sense, as amendments are likely to be needed depending on the species and region. The sub-model comprises a grid of cells, reprenting the landscape. Each cell has a “quality” value, which quantifies the amount of resources provided for a territory owner, for example a tiger. “Quality” could be prey density, shelter, or just space. Animals are located randomly in the landscape and add grid cells to their intial cell until the sum of the quality of all their cells meets their needs. If a potential new cell to be added is owned by another animal, competition takes place. The quality values are static, and the model does not include demography, i.e. mortality, mating, reproduction. Also, movement within a territory is not represented.

Package for simulating the behavior of experts in a scientific-forecasting competition, where the outcome of experiments itself depends on expert consensus. We pay special attention to the interplay between expert bias and trust in the reward algorithm. The package allows the user to reproduce results presented in arXiv:2305.04814, as well as testing of other different scenarios.

The Land Use Competition in Drylands (LUCID) model is a stylized agent-based model of a smallholder farming system. Its main purpose is to illustrate how competition between pastoralism and crop cultivation can affect livelihoods of households, specifically their food security. In particular, the model analyzes whether the expansion of crop cultivation may contribute to a vicious circle where an increase in cultivated area leads to higher grazing pressure on the remaining pastureland, which in turn may cause forage shortages and livestock loss for households which are then forced to further expand their cultivated area in order to increase their food security. The model does not attempt to replicate a particular case study but to generate a general understanding of mechanisms and drivers of such vicious circles and to identify possible scenarios under which such circles may be prevented.

The model is inspired by observations of the Borana land use system in Southern Ethiopia. The climatic and ecological conditions of the Borana zone favor pastoralism, and traditionally livelihoods have been based mainly on livestock keeping. Recent years, however, have seen an advancement of crop cultivation as a coping strategy, e.g., to compensate the loss of livestock, even though crop yields are low on average and successful harvests are infrequent.

In the model, it is possible to evaluate patterns of individual (single household) as well as overall (across all households) consumption and food security, depending on a range of ecological, climatic and management parameters.

This model is an implementation of a predator-prey simulation using NetLogo programming language. It simulates the interaction between fish, lionfish, and zooplankton. Fish and lionfish are both represented as turtles, and they have their own energy level. In this simulation, lionfish eat fish, and fish eat zooplankton. Zooplankton are represented as green patches on the NetLogo world. Lionfish and fish can reproduce and gain energy by eating other turtles or zooplankton.

This model was created to help undergraduate students understand how simulation models might be helpful in addressing complex environmental problems. In this case, students were asked to use this model to make predictions about how the introduction of lionfish (considered an invasive species in some places) might alter the ecosystem.

This model is intended to support oak tree management by representing the dynamics of oaks in multiple life stages and their competitors and consumers. This is implemented using a differential equation-based theoretical model representing three life stages of oaks: seedlings, juveniles, and adults. It includes the population dynamics of seedlings transitioning to juveniles, juveniles to adults, and adults producing new seedlings, as well as survival rates for each of the stages. It also includes a model of competition for light and water within seedlings and between seedlings and annual grasses. Finally, there is a predation term representing herbivores eating seedlings and grasses, using a Holling Type II (satiating) response with interference for predators and a death rate which depends on the resource extraction rate.

This is the agent-based model of information market evolution. It simulates the influences of the transition from material to electronic carriers of information, which is modelled by the falling price of variable production factor. It demonstrates that due to zero marginal production costs, the competition increases, the market becomes unstable, and experience various phases of evolution leading to market monopolization.