This book is a practical guide to the exploration and understanding of social and economic issues through simulation. It explains why one might use simulation in the social sciences and outlines a number of approaches to social simulation at a level of detail that should enable readers to understand the literature and to develop their own simulations. Interest in social simulation has been growing rapidly world-wide, mainly as a result of the increasing availability of powerful personal computers. The field has also been much influenced by developments in the theory of cellular automata (from physics and mathematics) and in computer science (distributed artificial intelligence and agent technology). These have
provided tools readily applicable to social simulation. Although the book is aimed primarily at scholars and postgraduates in the social sciences, it may also be of interest to computer scientists and to hobbyists with an interest in the topic. We assume an elementary knowledge of programming (for example, experience of writing simple programs in Basic) and some knowledge of the social and economic sciences.