When can modelers tune their models, after the fact? We argue that "tweaking" a simulation can be effective but that there are two central risks. First, it risks overfitting the simulation to the data and thus compromising predictive accuracy; and second, it risks compromising the...
A paper on some implications of new work on the nature of groups, for modeling in the social sciences. Here I focus on economic models of corruption. (Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2008)...
Reductionists and anti-reductionists alike have taken it to be trivial that the macroeconomic facts are exhaustively determined by microeconomic ones. In this paper, I challenge this supposed triviality. I argue that macroeconomic properties do not even globally supervene on microeconomic ones. This means that microeconomics-based...
A critical look at agent-based modeling in the social sciences. Two misconceptions about the relation between social macroproperties and microproperties afflict agent-based models. These lead current models to systematically ignore factors relevant to the properties they intend to model, and to overlook a wide range...
