Money Emergence on a Network Topology
In this work, we replicate Yasutomi’s (Physics D 82(1–2):180–194, 1995) model of money emergence, modifying the topology to introduce a plausible social structure. In line with Kobayashi et al. [Simulation modeling of emergence-of-money phenomenon by doub
- PDF / 369,051 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 439.36 x 666.15 pts Page_size
- 79 Downloads / 188 Views
Abstract In this work, we replicate Yasutomi’s (Physics D 82(1–2):180–194, 1995) model of money emergence, modifying the topology to introduce a plausible social structure. In line with Kobayashi et al. [Simulation modeling of emergence-of-money phenomenon by doubly structural network. In: Nakamatsu K, Phillips-Wren G, Jain LC, Howlett RJ (eds) New advances in intelligent decision technologies, vol 199. Springer, Berlin, pp 585–594 (Chap. 56)], we find that network structures allow for easier emergence of money, even if they hinder exchanges. A scale-free network, for the same number of links, guarantees more exchanges than a random one. Keywords Barter • Money • Money emergence • Random fluctuations • Simulation
1 Introduction We all know what money is; there’s nothing as obvious and as engraved in our everyday life. Money is one of the basic components of life, part of our everyday experience as much as sleep or food. But, unlike sleep or food, money is a cultural construct, playing the critical role of value storing and transfer. Now, being a cultural construct—an artifact—means that, again unlike food or sleep, we can inquire about money from the point of view of social research. Until recently, money has been the monopoly of national states or communities of them, such as the European Union. It has been a fundamental leveraging point for international trade and for balancing of national debts. Recent advances in
M. Paolucci () Laboratory of Agent-Based Social Simulation, ISTC-CNR, Via Palestro 32, 00185 Roma, Italy e-mail: [email protected] T. Murata et al. (eds.), Agent-Based Approaches in Economic and Social Complex Systems VII: Post-Proceedings of The AESCS International Workshop 2012, Agent-Based Social Systems 10, DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-54279-7 5, © Springer Japan 2013
61
62
M. Paolucci
ICT, however, show the potential to change the situation. As society evolves toward a socio-technical system, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and distributed money systems emerge, transforming and possibly disrupting value transfer, credit creation, financial services, and storage of value. Research should contribute in a crossdisciplinary way, improving the understanding of money and of, possibly informal, value transfer. We propose here a contribution in this direction, applying agentbased simulation to a simple model of money emergence. In [3], the authors argue that replication is fundamental for social simulation results, because it is the only way currently available to reveal possible weaknesses in the original model. In this spirit, we start by replicating a simple but influential model of money emergence from barter in [9]. To that model, we add an explicit social structure in the shape of a network topology, following the path of [5], showing how the shape and structure of agents’ relations—the topology—influence the established results.
2 Related Literature A quick survey of simulation-based explanations for the emergence of money produced, surprisingly, just a few hits. The first simulation was perf
Data Loading...
