MODULECO ©

Moduleco, a multi-agent modular framework for the simulation of network effects and population dynamics in social sciences, markets & organizations 

 Denis Phan^*,  Antoine Beugnard**

^* École Nationale Supérieure des télécommunications de Bretagne, Dpt Economie & ICI-Université Bretagne Occidentale
(CREM UMR CNRS 6211 University of Rennes 1 since sepember, 2004)
  ^** École Nationale Supérieure des télécommunications de Bretagne, Dpt Informatique

Ecole CNRS de Porquerolles - COGNITIVE ECONOMICS
September 25 to october 5, 2001

• Intro : Moduleco is a "multi-agent" platform, at the crossroads between several disciplines, designed to simulate markets and organizations, social phenomenon and population dynamics.

1 - preliminary examples with Moduleco :

1.1. A very simple social influence model
1.2. Two part tariff and diffusion with consumption externality : the monopoly case 
1.3. A Lux-like model of financial market.
1.4. In multi-agent systems, complex behavior may arise with very simple rules (i.e. spatial prisoner dilemma )

2 - Markets are social systems with complex dynamics and both individual and collective learning

2.1. Dynamics & emergence within the multi-agent systems (Xagents)

    (a) Emergence in very simple models : Shelling's segregation
    (b) Self Organized Criticality : the Back-Sneppen model of species coevolution
    (c) Diffusion and Criticality in Marketing : Neural Adaptive Social Network

2.2. Individual learning and cognitive hierarchy of the agent's behaviour (a) & (b)

2.3. Collective Learning : collective intelligence and intelligence of the collective phenomenon (a) & (b)

(complement : The statistical physics approach of financial markets)

3 - Moduleco is an object oriented modular Framework, designed for the multi-agent simulations and using medium to formalise agent interactions.

3.1. What is a framework ?

    (a) Framework and Dynamic links
    (b) Concepts of object oriented programming and multi-agent systems
    (c) advantages and constraints of this approach.

3.2. The Moduleco Framework :

    (a) Basic objects
    (b)  Medium and NeighbourBuilder
    (c) Agent's evolution& ActivationZone
    (d) Scheduler & strategies of evolution.

3.3. UML Diagrams (Unified Modeling Language)

    (a) A simplified UML representation of the Framework
    (b) UML representation of the walrassian Auctioneer
    (c) Distributed Virtual Market

• Bibliography and links towards others Multi-Agent Platforms

• A survey of some other "classical" models available on Moduleco

Annex 1 : Two part Tarif Competition with consumer externality  (a) UML representation (b) user interface (c) consumer's decision problem

Annex 2 : Moduleco's GUI (Graphic user interface)

bibliographie

Denis.Phan@enst-bretagne.fr ;   Antoine Beugnard@enst-bretagne.fr