Agent-based Modelling in the Social Sciences

Computational agent-based models (ABM) have become increasingly popular in Political Science. The purpose of an ABM is to simulate the emergence of macro-level social phenomena based on the interaction of individuals. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to ABM, drawing on examples across political science, sociology and economics. Using the free NetLogo software, students learn how to design agent-based simulation models from scratch and evaluate their output. The course starts with a discussion of ABM principles, and proceeds with a step-by-step introduction of essential ABM building blocks and their corresponding implementation in NetLogo. Further topics include the integration of empirical data, and the automatic execution of multiple simulation (―batch‖) runs. In supervised lab sessions, students develop their own implementation of an ABM. The exercises are based on the simple NetLogo programming language, and no prior experience in programming is required.

Course leader

Nils B. Weidmann Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

Target group

Advanced students and junior researchers in political science and adjacent disciplines

Course aim

as above