Visualizing the Invisible Hand of Markets: Simulating Complex Dynamic Economic Interactions

In complex systems, many different parts interact in non-obvious ways. Traditional research focuses on a few or a single aspect of the problem so as to analyze it with the tools available. To get an insight of phenomena that emerge from complex interactions, we need instruments that can analyze complex interactions of many parts simultaneously. Here, a simulator modeling different type of economies is explored in regard to its power in visualizing quantitatively complex aspects affecting the economic dynamics. The main conclusions are: 1Relative simple economic settings produce complex non-linear dynamics and therefore linear regressions are unsuitable to capture complex economic dynamics; 2Flexible pricing of goods by individual agents according to their micro-environment increases the health and wealth of the society, but price asymmetries between buyers and sellers have strong effects on the economic dynamics; 3Prices for goods conferring high risk long term benefits are not tracked efficiently by simple market forces. 4Division of labor creates synergies that improve enormously the health and wealth of the society by increasing the efficient of economic activity. 5Stochastic modeling might predict some aspects of real economies, but didactic games based based on it might help policy makers and non specialists in grasping the complex dynamics underlying even simple economic settings.