MultilevelModels(MLM)have pioneered the analysis of hierarchical data of two or more levels. Agent-Based Models (ABM) are also used to analyse social phenomena in which there are two or more levels involved. This paper addresses a comparison between MLM and ABM. To provide a basis of comparison,...

During the last thirty years education researchers have developed models for judging the comparative performance of schools, in studies of what has become known as “differential school effectivenessâ€. A great deal of empirical research has been carried out to understand why differences...

This paper presents a model to generate dynamic patterns of maritime piracy. Model details, outputs and calibration are illustrated. The model presented here is a tool to estimate the number of pirates and their area of action. The Gulf of Aden is considered as a case study, and data on pirate...

This paper explores how structural properties of small firms’ networks emerge from the ways firms exchange knowledge. In particular we are interested in analysing if and under which conditions the need for knowledge exchange within a set of co-located small firms is able to generate a more or...

The online content market for news and music is changing rapidly with the spread of technology and innovative business models (e.g. the online delivery of music, specialised subscription news services). It is correspondingly hard for suppliers of online content to anticipate developments and the...

The NewTies project is developing a system in which societies of agents are expected to develop autonomously as a result of individual, population and social learning. These societies are expected to be able to solve the environmental challenges that they are set by acting collectively. The...

An agent-based simulation model representing a theory of the dynamic processes involved in innovation in modern knowledge-based industries is described. The agent-based approach allows the representation of heterogeneous agents that have individual and varying stocks of knowledge. The simulation...

When designing an agent-based simulation, an important question to answer is how to model the decision making processes of the agents in the system. A large number of agent decision making models can be found in the literature, each inspired by different aims and research questions. In this...

The NewTies project is implementing a simulation in which societies of agents are expected to de-velop autonomously as a result of individual, population and social learning. These societies are expected to be able to solve environmental challenges by acting collectively. The challenges are...

This contribution deals with the assessment of the quality of a simulation by discussing and comparing "real-world" and scientific social simulations. We use the example of the Caffè Nero in Guildford as a 'real-world' simulation of a Venetian café. The construction of everyday simulations...