Computational and Experimental Economics

The BSE Summer Forum Workshop on Computational and Experimental Economics brings together researchers working in two still quite separate fields, Computational Economics and Experimental Economics, which, however, in recent years have seen a steady increase of fruitful interaction.

The Handbook of Computational Economics, Heterogenous Agents, edited by Cars Hommes, Blake LeBaron, Volume 4, 2018, Elsevier, has produced the newest developments in both fields, yet more in parallel, i.e. in separate chapters, than through tied collaboration.

Only a handful of researchers have worked in the intersection of both fields, despite their main common goals. These include the understanding of the emergent dynamic properties of economic models which are too complex to solve analytically, even when human behavior is captured by relatively simple heuristics, due to interactions out of equilibrium. Such models include Agent Based Modeling (ABM), models of learning based on genetic algorithm, Reinforcement models, and other learning models. While computational economics departs from simulations to derive their models, experimental economics uses human behavior and then simulation techniques to develop descriptive models of such behavior.