Biographical note: EpsteinJoshua M.: Joshua M. Epstein is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, a founding member of the Brookings-Johns Hopkins Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, and a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. He is the coauthor...

Acceptance of computer modeling and experimentation has spread slowly at best in economics in large part because agent-based models often seem foreign to the neoclassical core of economics, as that core is understood today. But in its beginnings neoclassical economics was not built from choice...

Economic growth depends not only on how people make decisions but also upon how their decisions are coordinated. Because of this, aggregate outcomes can diverge from individual intentions. I illustrate this with reference to the modern literature on economic growth, and also with reference to an...

This chapter treats a variety of epistemological issues surrounding generative explanation in the social sciences, and discusses the role of agent-based computational models in generative social science.