# Examples of well-established ABMs for economics/finance

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301>\
**Category:** Finance and Economics\
**Tags:** teaching, agents, modelling\
**Created:** [October 14, 2024, 6:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301 "2024-10-14T18:55:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Datseris](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/datseris/32/13406_2.png) [@Datseris](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Datseris)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2024, 6:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/1 "2024-10-14T18:55:26Z")

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Hello there! I am currently developing a small project for a student doing an MSc in Mathematics & Finance. Project is akin to a Master Thesis but 3-months long only. The goal of the project is to engage the student into basic academic skills: finding and reading literature, analyzing data, doing simulations to pursue hypothesis… The project I am thinking is based on Agent Based Modelling for economics. Something like: first implement an existing ABM on a topic of economics or socio-economics. Run it and get what insight it offers. Then compare it with real data and improve it / adjust it so that it is more representative of reality. This project is to be done with Agents.jl.

**I am searching for examples of well-established economics/finance agent based models the student can use as a starting point. If you know such models/papers, please share with me!**

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**Author:** ![Tortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6bbea6/32.png) [@Tortar](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tortar)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2024, 7:25pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/2 "2024-10-14T19:25:34Z")

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I’m intrigued by the results in [Economic forecasting with an agent-based model](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292122001891#d1e6697) where the authors were able to match the performance of traditional approaches to macroeconomics predictions via ABMs. There is also the code on Zenodo: [Supplementary material for the article "Economic forecasting with an agent-based model"](https://zenodo.org/records/7271552), it’s a lot of code though. It’s probably hard to replicate all results in Julia and Agents.jl but probably interesting for future research avenues.

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**Author:** ![jd-foster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jd-foster/32/35824_2.png) [@jd-foster](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jd-foster)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2024, 12:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/3 "2024-10-15T00:53:45Z")

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_Modeling the Transition to a Low-carbon Energy System_ by Jinxi Yang:

- [Note](https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/newsletterdl.aspx?id=1006)
- [Paper](https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/84)
- [PhD Thesis](https://research.chalmers.se/publication/525564/file/525564_Fulltext.pdf)
- [Code repository](https://github.com/happiABM/HAPPI_basic)

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**Author:** ![samerb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/samerb/32/9242_2.png) [@samerb](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/samerb)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2024, 5:10am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/4 "2024-10-15T05:10:53Z")

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Econ grad student here. Honestly never been quite clear on the definition of ABM.

Search and Matching is one setting that might be considered ABM with economics?

- [The Marriage Model with Search Frictions](https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~lones/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/marriage-JPE.pdf)
- [Matching, Search, and Heterogeneity](https://home.uchicago.edu/shimer/wp/published/msh.pdf)
- [lit review](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20150777)

There’s also stuff on mean-field games but I don’t know anything about it.  
[Mean Field Games in Macroeconomics](https://benjaminmoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/MFG_macro.pdf)

There is theoretical stuff on [evolutionary game theory](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262195874/population-games-and-evolutionary-dynamics/), but in applications, it seems the discipline tends to focus on equilibria themselves rather than how they are arrived at through a dynamic process.

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**Author:** ![nivertech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9a28c/32.png) [@nivertech](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nivertech)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2024, 5:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/5 "2024-10-15T05:41:21Z")

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Zero Intelligence Trader (ZI Trader)[1] and its extension: Zero Intelligence Plus Trader (ZI+ Trader).

It’s a very simple model with dumb agents which shows an emergence of the two-sided market.

Also check this paper [2] which review the state of the art in this field.

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1. [Zero-intelligence trader - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-intelligence_trader)

2. Agent-Based Modeling in Economics and Finance: Past, Present, and Future, Robert L. Axtell and J. Doyne Farmer, 2022

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**Author:** ![Tortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6bbea6/32.png) [@Tortar](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tortar)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2024, 12:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/6 "2024-10-17T00:33:59Z")

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Incredible but true, there is already a Julia implementation of the paper I cited and it is from researchers of the national bank of my country apparently 🤯

> **[GitHub - bancaditalia/BeforeIT.jl: A fast and modular Julia implementation of the...](https://github.com/bancaditalia/BeforeIT.jl)**
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> A fast and modular Julia implementation of the macroeconomic ABM of \[Poledna et al., European Economic Review (2023)\]

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**Author:** ![Datseris](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/datseris/32/13406_2.png) [@Datseris](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Datseris)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2024, 7:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/examples-of-well-established-abms-for-economics-finance/121301/7 "2024-10-17T07:59:48Z")

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Thanks a lot everyone for chiming in. This was really helpful for me! I’ve submitted the project proposal, let’s see how it goes!!!