Behavioural economics highlights the role of social preferences in economic decisions. Further, populations are heterogeneous, suggesting that the composition of social preference types within a group may impact the ability to sustain voluntary public goods contributions. We conduct agent-based simulations of contributions in a public goods game, varying group composition and the weight individ...

While many models have investigated the role of competitive mate selection processes in human marriage, few have addressed the potential for assortative processes to explain the observed demographics, as well as simultaneously investigating divorce. To explore the possibility that assortative mate selection processes may explain patterns of both marriage and divorce, we developed an agent-based...

INTRODUCTION Asthma is a multifactorial disease and a serious public health problem. Environmental factors and poverty are the main determinants of this disease. OBJECTIVE To describe the spatial and temporal distribution of asthma-related hospitalizations and identify the areas with the highest prevalence of and vulnerability to severe asthma in a major Brazilian city. METHODS An ecologica...

Electronic institutions (EIs) have been proposed as a means of regulating open agent societies. EIs define the rules of the game in agent societies by fixing what agents are permitted and forbidden to do and under what circumstances. And yet, there is the need for EIs to adapt their regulations to comply with their goals despite coping with varying populations of self-interested external agents...

There are currently a number of animation researchers that focus on simulating virtual crowds, but few are attempting to simulate virtual populations. Virtual crowd simulations tend to depict a large number of agents walking from one location to another as realistically as possible. The virtual humans in these crowds lack higher purpose. They have a virtual existence, but not a virtual life and...

We construct a novel agent-based model of prediction markets in which putative human qualities like learning, reasoning, and profit-seeking are absent. We show that the prices which emerge from a market populated by a class of distinctly inhuman agents, Zero-Intelligence agents with diffuse beliefs, replicate the findings of empirical market studies. We use this result to argue against the prev...

Electronic institutions (EIs) have been proposed as a means of regulating open agent societies. EIs define the rules of the game in agent societies by fixing what agents are permitted and forbidden to do and under what circumstances. And yet, there is the need for EIs to adapt their regulations to comply with their goals despite coping with varying populations of self-interested agents. This pa...