Modeling Nonspatial Socioeconomic Interactions: An Agent-Based Approach

Many important models of socioeconomic interaction depend upon social distance rather than spatial distance. Over time, social distance (connectivity) has increased in importance for many forms of interaction while spatial distance (proximity) has concomitantly decreased in importance following advances in transportation and communications technologies. Recently, this trend has accelerated explosively. Here, we will present a set of tools, along with some examples of their use, for the modeling of socioeconomic behavior in which there is a social rather than spatial dimension.