Do intermediaries still have a future in e-commerce? How do you prevent segregation in schools? Managers and policymakers deal with this kind of complex questions on a daily basis. CWI researcher Floortje Alkemade has developed an artificial society that can be used to estimate the impact of policy or social changes. On October 7 she defends her PhD-thesis at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Alkemade's artificial society is inhabited by agents, software components that can autonomously perform specific tasks. Just like humans the software agents make decisions and learn from these choices. This is achieved by using so-called evolutionary algorithms. New decision strategies are constantly 'born', but only the 'fittest' strategies survive. With these simulations Alkemade can simulate complex scenarios, when classical economic models fail.
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