Smoot-Hawley was not unique. From Versailles to Vietnam to Stalin’s grain quotas to the Maginot Line — the same pattern recurs. A model that forgets the other agents in the system.
Four Historical Decisions an ABM Would Have Changed
read more...
Agent Based Modeling
The Trade War Nobody Chose: Smoot-Hawley and the Model That Would Have Stopped It
In 1930, a thousand economists begged Hoover not to sign the Smoot-Hawley tariff. He signed it anyway. An agent-based model would have shown exactly what happened next — before it happened.
What Agent-Based Models See That Regressions Miss
Standard regression conflates micro configurations that produce identical macro observables. Four classical examples — wealth concentration from random exchange, Schelling segregation, phantom traffic jams, and bank runs — show that genuine causal structure can be i…
Agent-Based Models in the Peanut Butter Industry
Any market with heterogeneous agents, inventory dynamics, and competitive pricing produces emergent behavior that ABM is built to capture. Peanut butter turns out to be a surprisingly clean example.
ABM or MFG? The Cases Where the Answer Is Not Clear
Agent-based models and mean field games are often presented as alternatives. In practice, a significant share of real problems sit between them — and recognizing that grey zone is the first step toward modeling it correctly.
