A Study Of Economic Simulation Based On The Complex Adaptive System Theory

As a branch of science, economics has gone through hundreds years and formed an overall theoretic structure on the basis of conceptions, hypotheses, data, and mathematic models. Therefore it has been the mainstream in the fields of economics researches. However, the traditional economics is confronted with a tremendous challenge with the advent of the knowledge economics era. Firstly, many factors involved in economic practices and their complex relationships make difficult to the application of mathematic methods. Secondly, there are no reasonable solutions with the traditional methods to hierarchical structure problems of the economic system, and so all-around interpretation cannot be given to the characteristic difference between hierarchies, as a result, disconnections between macro theoretic structures and micro theoretic structures come into being. Thirdly, incompleteness and uncertainty of information are ubiquitous in the world, and they cannot be explained systematically by traditional economical theories. Lastly, microcosmic process of economy cannot be found out thoroughly with experimentalism methods of traditional economics based on observational data, thereby capabilities of explaining and forecasting reality with theories have been reduced.Since 1980's, scientists in many countries have developed lots of researches on considering economics an evolutional complex system, and have born abundant fruits. Hereinto, the study of Multi-Agent simulation of economies based on the complex adaptive system theory is an important research branch of the complexity of economy. In the middle of 1990's, an economicsmodel based on the complex adaptive system theory-ASPEN was developed by SandiaNational laboratory in America. The model built the macro structure of American economy though simulating properties and actions of micro agents and simulating interaction of these agents. Accordingly, the relationship between macro and micro is solved preferably. The fluctuating phenomena of American economy can be imitated properly by experiments with the model. Anyway, the model has many advantages, which are absent in econometric models and input-output models of traditional economics.The Technique of Multi-Agent economic simulation based on the CAS theory is equally of significant theoretic implications and application value in China's economic studies. Because the detailed technique of ASPEN was not released publicly, some universities and institutes, such as the Information School of Renmin University of China, the Research Center of Quantitative Economics of Jilin University, have done lots of work involving the study of such model. Quite some progress has been made.Because of lack of parallel-computer needed by ASPEN on a large scale in our country, a distributed platform, named DABS, for Multi-Agent simulation was developed with microcomputer under the circumstance of local area network by the author. Based on this platform, an imitation of ASPEN was implemented, and the simulating results are much closer to the prototype of ASPEN considering agent types, quantities, learning algorithms and relationships among agents.Furthermore, a model of China's transitional economy named CASPEN is developed successfully. Special characteristics of the transitional economy, with the planned economy and market economy concurrently existed, are simulated with the model, and then through comparing finance policy with monetary policy of market circumstance by experiments. By analyzing the experimental results, some suggestions about policy are presented to improve socialistic market economy of China.In this paper, the significance of research on some practical economic problems with Multi-Agent simulation based on the complex adaptive system theory is presented. First of all, it is an exploring of the methodology of economic studies. That is to say, study of Multi-Agent simulation of economies based on the complex adaptive system theory can uncover some intrinsic rules in economic system by analyzing experimental results. It displays the co...