Macroeconomics from the Bottom Up via Very Large Scale Multi-Agent Systems

这项研究涉及创建一种新的宏观经济模型。传统的宏观经济学使用数学来表示总体经济变量，如总储蓄和总投资，是如何共同决定彼此的。这样的模型是高度聚合的，就好像整个经济是由一个大公司组成的，它向一个同时也是雇员的消费者销售产品。由于计算机技术的最新进步，宏观经济可以更真实地表示，现实世界中存在的所有异质性也存在于模型中。在提议的研究中，计算模型将由大量（数百万）被称为代理的软件对象组成，每个对象代表一个人。随着时间的推移，这些代理人将在经济上相互作用，买卖人工制品，消费和储蓄，投资和贸易。使用这些模型，总体经济关系将在横截面上以及随着时间的推移而出现。总体目标是最终建立一个行为丰富的“玻璃下”经济模型，也就是所谓的“人工经济”，可以根据今天的实体经济进行校准。如果成功，这项研究将使宏观经济学远离高度程式化的模型和经验上不现实的行为规范，转向更可信的模型。最终，这些努力的目标是建立在预测经济近期发展方面表现优异的宏观经济模型，从而提供更准确的经济发展预测。这些模型可以帮助决策者做出决策，进而可能转化为经济表现的潜在大幅增长。

This research concerns the creation of a new kind of macroeconomic model. Conventional macroeconomics uses mathematics to represent how aggregate economic variables, like overall savings and investment, jointly determine one another. Such models are highly aggregate, as if the overall economy consisted of one large firm selling to a single consumer who is also an employee. Due to recent advances in computer technology, the macroeconomy can be represented much more realistically, with all the heterogeneity that is present in the real world also present in models of it.In the proposed research, computational models will be built consisting of large numbers (millions) of software objects known as agents, with each object representing a person. Over time these agents will interact economically, buying and selling artificial goods, consuming and saving, investing and trading. Using such models, aggregate economic relationships will emerge in cross-section as well as over time. The overall goal is to end up with a behaviorally rich model of an economy 'under glass,' so to speak-an artificial economy-that can be calibrated to real economies of today. If successful, this research will move macroeconomics away from highly stylized models and empirically unrealistic behavioral specifications, to models that are more believable. Ultimately, the goal of such efforts is to produce macroeconomic models that have high performance at predicting the near term unfolding of an economy, thus providing more accurate forecasts of economic evolution. These models could aid policy-makers in their decision-making, which in turn could translate into potentially very large increases in the performance of the economy.