Patent ID: 6985867

Claim:
A method of predicting a change in an economy, practiced on a computer, where the economy comprises a plurality of decision makers and economic variables having initial values, said method comprising the steps of: a) representing the decision makers by a plurality of agents, where each agent comprises internal state and decision rules defining the agent's actions responsive to input messages and the internal state; b) initializing the internal state of each agent; c) processing each agent, where processing an agent comprises the steps of: i) receiving an input message destined for the agent, if one exists; ii) generating output messages and changes to the agent's internal state based on the input message, the agent's internal state, and the agent's decision rules, where an output message comprises information identifying an indicated destination agent; iii) repeating steps i) and ii) until there are no more input messages destined for the agent; d) routing output messages from each agent to indicated destination agents; e) determining new values for the economic variables from the agents' internal states and the output messages; f) repeating steps c, d, and e until a terminal condition is reached; and g) outputting a representation of the change in the economy based on the initial values of the economic variables and the new values of the economic variables.