The Agent-Based Double Auction Markets: 15 Years On

Abstract

Novelties discovering as a source of constant change is the essence of economics. However, most economic models do not have the kind of novelties-discovering agents required for constant changes. This silence was broken by Andrews and Prager 15 years ago when they placed GP (genetic programming)-driven agents in the double auction market. The work was, however, neither economically well interpreted nor complete; hence the silence remains in economics. In this article, we revisit their model and systematically conduct a series of simulations to better document the results. Our simulations show that human-written programs, including some reputable ones, are eventually outperformed by GP. The significance of this finding is not that GP is alchemy. Instead, it shows that novelties-discovering agents can be introduced into economic models, and their appearance inevitably presents threats to other agents who then have to react accordingly. Hence, a potentially indefinite cycle of change is triggered.