JASSS Vol.4(2) available

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The second issue of volume four of the Journal of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) was published on March 31st.

JASSS is an electronic, refereed journal devoted to the exploration
and understanding of social processes by means of computer
simulation.  It is located at .
It is freely available, with no subscription.

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The new issue is largest ever published by JASSS, with 8 refereed
articles, 3 commentaries, a Forum piece and 4 book reviews.  The
issue has the theme "Agent-based modelling, game theory and natural
resource management issues" and has been guest edited by François
Bousquet and colleagues.

Refereed articles

In their editorial, the editors note that the research questions
addressed in research on environmental resource management are very
often questions of collective decision-making. Several actors have to
coordinate the sharing of a common environment and manage the
externalities generated by individual decisions. Game theoretic
modelling has been developed since the end of 1950s to understand
strategic interactions between actors. More recently, agent-based
models have been proposed to simulate interactions between agents.
For many researchers, it is not clear whether it is better to  use
game theory or a multi-agent system (MAS). Are the underlying
concepts and hypothesis different? What are the possible linkages
between these methods?  The papers in this issue address these
questions and provide some illustrations of what can be achieved with
MAS in this field.

The articles in this issue are:

* Wolfang Balzer, Karl R. Brendel and Solveig Hofmann
   Bad Arguments in the Comparison of Game Theory and
         Simulation in Social Studies

* Scott Moss
   Game Theory: Limitations and an Alternative

* O. Thébaud and B. Locatelli
   Modelling the emergence of resource-sharing conventions:
         An agent-based approach

* Jim Doran
   Intervening to Achieve Co-operative Ecosystem Management:
         Towards an Agent Based Model

* Olivier Barreteau, François Bousquet, Jean-Marie Attonaty
   Role-playing games for opening the black box of multi-agent systems:
         Method and lessons of its application to
         Senegal River Valley irrigated systems

* Sophie Thoyer, Sylvie Morardet, Patrick Rio, Leo Simon, Rachel
         Goodhue and Gordon Rausser
   A Bargaining Model to Simulate Negotiations between Water Users

   -  Bruce Edmonds
      Commentary
   -  S. Thoyer, S. Morardet, P. Rio
      A short answer to Bruce Edmonds' commentary

* Rosaria Conte and Frank Dignum
   From Social Monitoring to Normative Influence

* Juliette Rouchier, Martin O'Connor, François Bousquet
   The creation of a reputation in an artificial society organised
         by a gift system

   -  Frédéric Gannon
      Commentary


Forum

In Forum section, Pietra Terna reflects on the lessons to be learned
from the Sugarscape "bottom-up" style of modelling

*  Pietro Terna
    Creating Artificial Worlds: A Note on Sugarscape and Two Comments


Reviews

There are book reviews of:

*  Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop
      Lars-Erik Cederman
    Reviewed by David Lazer

*  Modelling and Simulation in the Social Sciences from a Philosophy
    of Science Point of View
        Edited by Rainer Hegselmann, Ulrich Mueller and Klaus G. Troitzsch
    Reviewed by Leslie Henrickson

*  Artificial Life VI: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference
    on Artificial Life
        Edited by Christoph Adami, Richard K. Belew, Hiroaki Kitano and
            Charles E. Taylor
    Reviewed by Itzhak Benenson

*  Multi-Agent System: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial
    Intelligence
        Jacques Ferber
    Reviewed by Juliette Rouchier


The new issue can be accessed through the JASSS home page:
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html


--
_______________________________________________________________________
Professor Nigel Gilbert,  Editor, Journal of Artificial Societies and
    Social Simulation, .
Centre for Research on Simulation in the Social Sciences (CRESS),
    Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.
   Tel:+44 1483 259173  Fax:+44 1483 259551  [email protected]
Simulation resources at


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