Summer School on Computational Methods and Simulation for Economics

6th - 9th June 2017

Aims and Objective


It is a week-long full-time course to teaching students how to best exploit agent-based simulation models in Economics for research purposes. Agent-based models are increasingly adopted as research tool in many social sciences. Along with many advantages, however, this research tool is frequently considered technically difficult to adopt and criticised because of the lack of a generally accepted methodological protocol. The course aims at providing students with both the technical and methodological skills required to successfully apply an agent-based model in a research project, such as a PhD or a paper.

To whom it is addressed

The summer school is addressed to highly motivated graduate students and PhD students as well as researchers interested in computational social sciences and to experienced modellers interested in exploring an alternative modeling tool.

What will you learn

The course provides guidance on all the steps a researcher needs to follow to use an agent-based simulation model.
The course consists in exercises carried out by students under the supervision of the staff alternated with lectures on examples of pieces of research carried out by using agent-based models. Students are encouraged to bring their own project and develop parts of an original simulation model.
Students will learn to use the simulation platform Laboratory for Simulation Development - LSD (www.labsimdev.org). LSD generates very efficient C++-based simulation programs complete with a professional set of interfaces for the development, control and analysis of simulations. Though LSD does not pose constraints on the class and size of models to implement, it is designed to minimize the amount of code required to generate a model and to optimize the performance. It is thus an attractive choice both for first- time modelers willing to experiment with simple models and for large-scale projects seeking high computational performance. Attendance of the course does not require any prior programming or modeling experience.

Teaching staff

Prof. Marco Valente (University of L'Aquila)

Prof. Tommaso Ciarli (University of Sussex)

Application requirements

Selection of applicants will be made on cv, motivation letter (max 2 pages) detailing the interest of the candidate and, if possible, the type of model s/he would be interested in developing. The number of participants is restricted to 20. Application deadline is March, 1st 2017. Applications should be sent to paola.dorazio@rub.de. Later applications will also be evaluated, but only in the case of free posts. Applicants will be notified by e-mail regarding the status of their applications by the end of March, 2017.

Participation Fee

The Summer School admission is free of charge. Because of limited available funding, other expenses, such as dinners, travels, accommodation, will not be covered by organisers.

Poster Complexity Summer School 2017

Following the link below, you find the poster of the planned Summer School

Poster Complexity Summerschool 2017

Contact

Dr. Paola D'Orazio
Post-doctoral researcher
Chair of Macroeconomics

paola.dorazio@rub.de