Observing agents and logging

There are different ways of observing your agents:

Trade Logging:

abcEconomics by default logs all trade and creates a SAM or IO matrix.

Manual in agent logging:

An agent is instructed to log a variable with log() or a change in a variable with log_change().

Aggregate Data:

aggregate() save agents possessions and variable aggregated over a group

Panel Data:

panel() creates panel data for all agents in a specific agent group at a specific point in every round. It is set in start.py

How to retrieve the Simulation results is explained in retrieval

Trade Logging

By default abcEconomics logs all trade and creates a social accounting matrix or input output matrix. Because the creation of the trade log is very time consuming you can change the default behavior in world_parameter.csv. In the column ‘trade_logging’ you can choose ‘individual’, ‘group’ or ‘off’. (Without the apostrophes!).

Manual logging

All functions except the trade related functions can be logged. The following code logs the production function and the change of the production from last year:

output = self.produce(self.inputs)
self.log('production', output)
self.log_change('production', output)

Log logs dictionaries. To log your own variable:

self.log('price', {'input': 0.8, 'output': 1})

Further you can write the change of a variable between a start and an end point with: observe_begin() and observe_end().

Panel Data

Group.panel_log(variables=[], goods=[], func={}, len=[])

panel_log(.) writes a panel of variables and goods of a group of agents into the database, so that it is displayed in the gui.

Args:

goods (list, optional):

a list of all goods you want to track as ‘strings’

variables (list, optional):

a list of all variables you want to track as ‘strings’

func (dict, optional):

accepts lambda functions that execute functions. e.G. func = lambda self: self.old_money - self.new_money

len (list, optional):

records the length of the list or dictionary with that name.

Example in start.py:

for round in simulation.next_round():
    firms.produce_and_sell()
    firms.panel_log(goods=['money', 'input'],
                variables=['production_target', 'gross_revenue'])
    households.buying()

Aggregate Data

Group.agg_log(variables=[], goods=[], func={}, len=[])

agg_log(.) writes a aggregate data of variables and goods of a group of agents into the database, so that it is displayed in the gui.

Args:

goods (list, optional):

a list of all goods you want to track as ‘strings’

variables (list, optional):

a list of all variables you want to track as ‘strings’

func (dict, optional):

accepts lambda functions that execute functions. e.G. func = lambda self: self.old_money - self.new_money

len (list, optional):

records the length of the list or dictionary with that name.

Example in start.py:

for round in simulation.next_round():
    firms.produce_and_sell()
    firms.agg_log(goods=['money', 'input'],
                variables=['production_target', 'gross_revenue'])
    households.buying()

Retrieval of the simulation results

Agents can log their internal states and the simulation can create panel data. abcEconomics.logger.

the results are stored in a subfolder of the ./results/ folder. The exact path is in simulation.path. So if you want to post-process your data, you can write a function that changes in to the simulation.path directory and manipulates the CSV files there. The tables are stored as ‘.csv’ files which can be opened with excel.

The same data is also as a sqlite3 database ‘database.db’ available. It can be opened by ‘sqlitebrowser’ in ubuntu.

Example:

In start.py

simulation = abcEconomics.Simulation(...)
...
simulation.run()

os.chdir(simulation.path)
firms = pandas.read_csv('aggregate_firm.csv')
...