Trade Network Game (TNG) and SimBioSys

Leigh Tesfatsion

Market Structure
Game Theory

Software Tool

The Trade Network Game (TNG) is a framework for studying the formation and evolution of trade networks among strategically interacting traders (buyers, sellers, and dealers) operating under variously specified market protocols. Successive generations of resource-constrained traders choose and refuse trade partners on the basis of continually updated expected utility, engage in trade interactions modelled as 2-person games, and evolve their trade strategies over time. The TNG framework permits evolutionary outcomes to be studied at four different levels: trader attributes (endogenous evolution of personality types); trade network formation (who is trading with whom, and with what regularity); expressed trade behavior (cooperative, predacious,...); and individual and social welfare measures (market efficiency, market power, individual utility levels,...).