Market as Artifacts: Aggregate Efficiency from Zero-intelligence Traders

Three phenomena—the disparity between the assumed and observed attributes of economic man, the link between nature and artifacts, and the use of computers as a source of knowledge––fascinated Herbert A. Simon. He built a new paradigm for each field—bounded rationality to deal with the disparity, the science of the artificial as its link to nature, and artificial intelligence for creation of knowledge. In this paper we show that the sciences of the artificial and computer intelligence also hold a key to an understanding of the disparity between individual behavior and market outcomes. When seen as human artifacts, a science of markets need not be built from the science of individual behavior. We outline how, in the nineties, computer simulations enabled us to discover that allocative efficiency—a key characteristic of market outcomes—is largely independent of variations in individual behavior under classical conditions. The Sciences of the Artificial suggests such independence and points to its benefits. JEL Classification: A12, B25, C9, D44, D81