Three simultaneous and strongly related events will be held in Barcelona covering the area of computational simulation and social phenomena:

Keynote speakers

Rainer Hegselmann, Prf. Dr., obtained his master's degree in social sciences in 1973 at the University of Bochum, Germany, and he took his PhD in philosophy from the University Essen in 1977. He was professor of philosophy at the University of Bremen 1988-1996, and since 1996 he is professor of philosophy at the University of Bayreuth, and has been fellow / guest professor at The Netherlands Institute For Advanced Study (1994), at the Institute For Advanced Study in Vienna, Austria (1995), at the Centre For Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University (1999-2000), at the Catholic University Leuven, Belgium (2009).
His main research interests concern modelling and simulation of social dynamics, moral philosophy, philosophy of science, and the history of early analytical philosophy.
In the academic year 2012/13 he is senior at the Alfried-Krupp-Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald, and Head of Bayreuther Forschungszentrums Modellierung und Simulation sozioökonomischer Phänomene (MODUS).

"Thomas Schelling and James M. Sakoda: How to Become an Unknown Pioneer?"
Schelling‘s model has become a classical reference in many scientific contexts: explanation of residential segregation, unintended consequences, micro-macro relations, clustering, social phase transitions, invisible hand explanations, and emergence of spontaneous order. The model has also become a paradigmatic case for the study of mechanisms and the discussion of the status of models in general. Schelling’s model is often considered as the earliest and pioneering example for an agent-based computer simulation.
Without any doubt, Schelling’s model is a wonderful model. However, there is a model, developed by James Minoru Sakoda, that is much more general. In a certain sense it is fair to say that it contains Schelling’s model as an instance. Sakoda’s model was developed much earlier – a first version already by the end of the 1940ies. But today Sakoda and his model is basically forgotten. How could that happen? The talk will try to give an answer.

Cesáreo Hernández, Ph.D, is Professor of Business and Economics and head of the B&E Department at the University of Valladolid, Spain. He graduated from the University of Barcelona in Industrial Engineering and Economics. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1975 on applications of Control Theory to Econometrics.

He initially worked in time series analysis in econometric modelling as a postgraduate at the L.S.E. and Imperial College (London).He is Director of the Complex Social Systems Group at INSISOC (Social Systems Engineering Centre). His research interests include economic methodology and ABM social simulation.

"Artificial Economics And The Future of Political Economy"
Economics is a social science. Being social it inherits complexity. Being science it demands experimentation. Yet conventional wisdom has widely regarded Economics as a non-experimental science that had to rely on observations of real-world, rather than on controlled experiments. With the Nobel Prized awarded to D. Kahneman and V. Smith, Economics was recognized as an experimental science, not without dispute, and Experimental Economics as mainstream Economics. Artificial Economics (AE) extends the scope of Experimental Economics and it helps handling the social complexity of Political Economy. AE can guide us in shaping the missing source of rationality in Economics: ecological rationality, and collective intelligence. AE (simulation with soft agents) can give precise content to the verbal narrative accounting of the classical Political Economists: A. Smith, D. Hume and F. Hayek. On the other hand if AE helps to design efficient exchange institutions say auctions, we solve at the same time the inherent problem of choice under scarcity, thus exporting socially inspired methods to management engineering.

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