Tools of the Trade: A Survey of Various Agent Based Modeling Platforms

Agent Based Modeling (ABM) toolkits are as diverse as the community of people who use them. With so many toolkits available, the choice of which one is best suited for a project is left to word of mouth, past experiences in using particular toolkits and toolkit publicity. This is especially troublesome for projects that require specialization. Rather than using toolkits that are the most publicized but are designed for general projects, using this paper, one will be able to choose a toolkit that already exists and that may be built especially for one's particular domain and specialized needs. In this paper, we examine the entire continuum of agent based toolkits. We characterize each based on 5 important characteristics users consider when choosing a toolkit, and then we categorize the characteristics into user-friendly taxonomies that aid in rapid indexing and easy reference.Agent Based Modeling, Individual Based Model, Multi Agent Systems

Methods and Tools for the Microsimulation of Household Expenditure

Spending by households represents a significant component in the UK economy and the ability to model the effects of socio-economic change on household expenditure is crucial at both the commercial and governmental level. This is usually done by estimating the parameters of a demand system. However, there are several difficulties associated with this approach including, representing the heterogeneity of economic units, the dimensionality of a complex budget set and the specification of the functional form. One way to avoid these is to develop a model that directly simulates the individual units in what is known as a microsimulation. However, models of this type have been found to be complex and expensive to develop. This thesis investigates the possibility of simplifying the development process by using an agent-based modelling toolkit called NetLogo. The idea is tested by constructing a model to project the demographic characteristics of the UK population over time, showing that NetLogo provides a powerful and efficient platform for microsimulation modelling. Then it applies what is known as a random assignment scheme to model household expenditure. This is based on the idea of copying the expenditure pattern from a donor, which is in some sense similar to the receiving unit. Random assignment is then tested by developing a series of models of the effect of demographic and economic change on UK household expenditure patterns. The thesis contributes to methods and tools for modelling household expenditure by developing a framework for the analysis of household spending patterns based on the application of micro-level concepts and techniques throughout. This makes it possible to do what could not be done before which is to have a convenient way to model household expenditure that places no limit on the level of disaggregation or the number of goods represented