Policymakers decide on alternative policies facing restricted budgets and uncertain future. Designing public policies is further difficult due to the need to decide on priorities and handle effects across policies. Housing policies, specifically, involve heterogeneous characteristics of properties themselves and the intricacy of housing markets and the spatial context of cities. We propose PolicySpace2 (PS2) as an adapted and extended version of the open source PolicySpace agent-based model. PS2 is a computer simulation that relies on empirically detailed spatial data to model real estate, along with labor, credit, and goods and services markets. Interaction among workers, firms, a bank, households and municipalities follow the literature benchmarks to integrate economic, spatial and transport scholarship. PS2 is applied to a comparison among three competing public policies aimed at reducing inequality and alleviating poverty: (a) house acquisition by the government and distribution to lower income households, (b) rental vouchers, and (c) monetary aid. Within the model context, the monetary aid, that is, smaller amounts of help for a larger number of households, makes the economy perform better in terms of production, consumption, reduction of inequality, and maintenance of financial duties. PS2 as such is also a framework that may be further adapted to a number of related research questions.

This is a modified version (Netlogo 4.0.3) of the model in support of Erik Johnstons dissertation, programmed in Netlogo 3.1.4 (May 15th, 2007).

The provided source code is the result of our efforts in replicating Epstein’s Demographic Prisoner’s Dilemma. The simulation model is written in Repast/J 3.1.

This model simulates the dynamics of eighteenth-century infantry battle tactics. The goal is to explore the effect of different tactics and individual traits in the dynamics of the combat.

This model is a simulation of the ceremonial exchange network in Papua New Guinea called the Kula Ring. In the Kula Ring, there are two types of gifts that travel in opposite directions: armshells co

This is the code for the model described in an article in the International Journal of Microsimulation. Lawson (2013) ‘Modelling Household Spending Using a Random Assignment Scheme’, International Journal of Microsimulation, 6(2) Autumn 2013, 56-75.

This model simulates how the strategy one manages time affect the well-being that he/she can obtain.

We expose RA agent-based model of the opinion and tolerance dynamics in artificial societies. The formal mathematical model is based on the ideas of Social Influence, Social Judgment, and Social Identity theories.

This model is designed to investigate the impact of alternative policy approaches and changing land tenure dynamics on farmer adoption of conservation practices intended to increase the water quality.

This model is intended to study the way information is collectively managed (i.e. shared, collected, processed, and stored) in a system and how it performs during a crisis or disaster. Performance is assessed in terms of the system’s ability to provide the information needed to the actors who need it when they need it. There are two main types of actors in the simulation, namely communities and professional responders. Their ability to exchange information is crucial to improve the system’s performance as each of them has direct access to only part of the information they need.

In a nutshell, the following occurs during a simulation. Due to a disaster, a series of randomly occurring disruptive events takes place. The actors in the simulation need to keep track of such events. Specifically, each event generates information needs for the different actors, which increases the information gaps (i.e. the “piles” of unaddressed information needs). In order to reduce the information gaps, the actors need to “discover” the pieces of information they need. The desired behavior or performance of the system is to keep the information gaps as low as possible, which is to address as many information needs as possible as they occur.