Timing matters: Lessons From The CA Literature On Updating

In the present article we emphasize the importance of modeling time in the context of agent-based models. To this end, we present a (selective) survey of the Cellular Automata-literature on updating and draw parallels to the issue of agent activation in agent-based models. By means of two simple models, Schelling’s segregation model and Epstein’s demographic prisoner’s dilemma we investigate the influence of choosing different regimes of agent activation. Our experiments indicate that timing is not a critical issue for very simple models but bears huge influence on model behavior and results as soon as the degree of complexity increases only so slightly. After a brief review of the way commonly used ABM simulation environments handle the issue of timing, we draw some tentative conclusions about the importance of timing and the need for more research towards that direction, similar to the concerted effort on updating in cellular automata.