After successful completion of the course, students are able to describe the conceptes and techniques which are presented in the section ”Contents“ with technical vocabulary.

Furthermore, students can 

asses the the diversity of agent based modelling as a research tool,
condense, summarize and present the most important concepts of an ABM research paper for a peer audience
document the results of a research experiment employing agent based modelling
independently deepen their knowledge about agent based modelling and agent based models

Finally, students can

independently solve assigned tasks on time
communicate prepared presentations and prepare to answer questions from peers

The course is stuctured as a literature seminar, which deals with selected topics in a quite modern branch of Computational Economics - Agent Based Computational Economics / Modelling (ACE).

This type of modelling employs bottom-up techniques that focus on the interaction between heterogenous indiviual agents (households, firms,etc.) and their environment - based on behavioral rules. This way, various important nonlinear processes can be studied and phenomena investigated and explained, which are heavily influenced by the heterogeneity of the individuals (non-uniform distributions of attributes - age, income, wealth, etc.), their evolving specific interaction structures (social networks) and their often boundedly rational decision making, which could otherwise not be explained and understood.

Students select a topic from a list of research articles from this area and try to understand, condense and present this topic to a student audience. Furthermore, students comment on the presentations of other students.

The course is stuctured as a literature seminar. After an introduction during the initial meeting / lecture, students choose from a list of selected research papers and prepare slides for a presentation. After giving the presentation in front of class using digital slides, students discuss their paper as well as presentations of other students. Finally students prepare a written report.

Please register in TISS and attend the initial meeting if you plan to participate in the course (even if you are not yet perfectly sure if you will participate)

Besides deepening the understanding of economic and socioeconomic ABM models, the course is often used as a prestage of writing a master thesis in this field (and is a prerequisite for writing a master thesis with me).

Students prepare slides and give an oral presentation, additionally students prepare a written report.

Visiting the course Computational Social Simulation is not a prerequiste, but at least a useful addition for deepening the understanding of the technical side of agent based modelling, its positioning in social simulation, i.e. its relation to other simulation techniques.