the Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange

Debt the first 5,000 years (an interview with the author David Graeber)

2012-01-19T15:04:00.002+01:00

An interesting interview (the second half of the programme) where David Graeber describes his anthropological study of 5,000 years of Debt which shows that dispensing credit precedes even the invention of money.

Hear the interview at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0196rp1

See the book:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GYhajCQU8XIC

ICORE 2011 Accepted papers online

2011-09-17T10:31:00.003+02:00

The paper to be presented at the International Conference on Reputation 2011 (co-located with ESSA 2011) are now online:
http://2011.icore.name/about/12/accepted-papers

Unfortunately I can not be there :-(

Flattr - The Social Way to Get Paid Online

2011-08-10T12:38:00.004+02:00

A system of micro-payments for distributing payments for stuff we use...

see http://flattr.com/

World Economics Association - Progress Report

2011-07-28T13:27:00.001+02:00

Dear Member of the World Economics Association,

The WEA is now two months old. So I thought I should give you a brief report on how things stand.

Membership is now over 6,000. Donations total nearly £13,000.

The Journals

Seven of the ten co-editorships of the WEA ’s two new journals have been filled. These are as follows.

Economic Thought

John Latsis , UK, Reading Univeristy

Annalisa Rosselli , Italy , Rome La Sapienza

Alejandro Nadal , Mexico , El Colegio de Mexico

World Economics Journal

Zhu Andong , China , Tsinghua University , Beijing

Jayati Ghosh , India , Jawaharial Nehru University

Norbert Häring , Germany , Handelsblatt

Michael Hudson , USA , University of Missouri at Kansas City

We have chosen and are in the process of purchasing an online journal software system for the WEA ’s three journals. It should be up and running by late August. When it is, you will be notified so that you can submit papers. We will also at that time be looking for volunteers to perform various tasks involved in the production of the journals. Meanwhile the editors of the World Economic Journal have already begun work at putting together the first issue. My WEA work commitments have delayed the publication of issue no. 57 of the real-world economics review, but it should be out soon.

Editorial Boards have been formed for the three journals and are listed here for the WEJ, here for ET, and here for the RWER.

Online Conferences: Volunteers needed

This link to our Guidelines for Conferences explains the anticipated conference setup. The Guidelines are open to amendment. We are currently investigating online conference software. It is likely that we will opt for a system that is a module of our journal software. In any case we need:

- 3 or 4 people to serve on the Conference Organisation Committee as described in the Guidelines,.

- Conference Leaders as also described in the Guidelines. This role especially concerns people who have a topic or set of topics that they would like to make the focus of a conference.

- one or more people with a bit of IT knowledge may also be needed.

Executive Committee

Progress with establishing the World Economics Association reached the point where it needed a top layer of formal structure in addition to its legal status as a Community Interest Company (CIC) under UK law. A formal constitution with procedures for electing officers and Executive Committee members is being prepared, but things are not yet far enough advanced for its adoption and enactment. Therefore we have recruited an interim Executive Committee. Its members are currently as follows.

Juan Carlos Moreno Brid , Mexico , UN Economic Com. for Latin America and the Caribbean

C. P. Chandrasekhar , India , Jawaharlal Nehru University

Ping Chen , China , Peking University and Fudan University

Edward Fullbrook , UK , Real-World Economics Review

James K. Galbraith , USA , University of Texas at Austin

Grazia Ietto-Gillies , Italy / UK , London South Bank University

Steve Keen , Australia , University of Western Sydney

Tony Lawson , UK , Cambridge University

Peter Radford , USA , Radford Free Press

Dani Rodrik , USA , Harvard University

Your ideas for the development of the WEA are welcome.

I and my co-organizers Peter Radford, Norbert Häring , Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Vicki Harris and Valerie Radford, who have worked hard for many months, thank you for your support. We hope that you will continue to spread the word among your colleagues and encourage them to join the World Economics Association. Six thousand members is an excellent beginning.

Edward Fullbrook

A post of mine on the RWER Blog

2011-07-07T18:46:00.002+02:00

On the Real World Economics Review Blog

entitled: Unpicking the anti-neo-classical “hairball”, so that what we are for is not defined by what we are against

Real World Economics Review special issue deadline: 15th June

2011-06-02T12:17:00.002+02:00

A reminder. For details see the post
http://scive.blogspot.com/2011/01/call-for-papers-planned-special-issue.html

Formation of the World Economics Association

2011-05-17T15:35:00.009+02:00

An invitation that reached me from the Real-World Economics Review. Founder members from the UK include:

Edward Fullbrook, Real-World Economics Review
Geoffrey Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire
Tony Lawson, Cambridge University
Paul Ormerod, Voltara Consulting

Its free to join and might be more open and inclusive than existing Economics assocations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We, the 141 economists from the 40 countries listed below, invite you to join the World Economics Association which we are launching today.

Two commitments listed in our Manifesto sum up the project.

1. To plurality. The Association will encourage the free exploration of economic reality from any perspective that adds to the sum of our understanding. To this end, it advocates plurality of thought, method and philosophy.

8. To global democracy. The Association will be democratically structured so as not to allow its domination by one country or one continent.

The creation of the WEA addresses an obvious gap in the international community of economists – the absence of a truly international, pluralist association. Today’s digital technology makes it feasible to close this gap quickly and cheaply through a bottom-up, grass-roots approach.

The WEA has been legally constituted in the United Kingdom as a “Community Interest Company”, a special legal category (with an asset lock) for non-profit organizations whose purpose is to serve the public interest.

Membership of the World Economics Association is free. To join, all that you need to do is go here and then enter your name, email address and country and then click. You will also be given the option of providing us with a few professional details, but none of these are required. You will receive an email confirming your membership of the WEA . You will also be given the opportunity to make a donation to the running of the WEA . We want to emphasize that the WEA has no major donors, neither institutional nor individual, behind it.

The WEA will initially publish three journals, two of them new. Online access will be free to members, with print copies available to libraries and individuals for a fee. The WEA ’s very large membership from which to draw papers will ensure a high standard of scholarship. The general-purpose flagship journal will be the World Economics Journal. The other new journal, Economic Thought , will focus on the history, methodology and philosophy of economics. The Real-World Economics Review will henceforth be published under the umbrella of the WEA . If you wish, you may read a document detailing the structures and procedures, which include an open review process, for the journals.

From its website, the WEA will also run online conferences.

Help economics and yourself. Become a WEA member now .

A special session on SCIVE at ECCS 2011, Sept 2011, Montpellier, France

2011-04-11T10:43:00.000+02:00

There will be a special session on the Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange at the 7th European Social Simulation Association Conference, September 19-23, 2011, Montpellier - France.

This is (in my opinion) the best social simulation conference in the world. For more details see:
http://www.essa2011.org/specific_sessions

CfP: 2nd International Conference on Reputation (ICORE 2011)

2011-02-03T19:22:00.000+01:00

2nd International Conference on
Reputation
(ICORE 2011)
Montpellier, France, September 19th, 2011

http://2011.icore.name

co-located with
ESSA 2011

IMPORTANT DATES

** Abstract submission: June, 1st, 2011 **
Full papers required on June, 15th.
Notification of acceptance: July, 10th.
The conference will take place on September, 19th.

------------

The second International Conference on *Reputation*: 'Society, Economy, Trust' takes over the success of the Gargonza's first edition (http://2009.icore.name) as a point of convergence in the interdisciplinary study of reputation.

The study of reputation and gossip is paramount in many fields of the social sciences, for example organization science, policy-making, (e-)governance, cultural evolution, social dilemmas, socio-dynamics, and sociobiology. Interest in reputation is increasing in philosophy, psychology, social psychology, sociology, and cognitive science; formal models appear in game theoretical, mathematical, and physics journals; computational reputation systems are among the most studied subjects in multi-agent technology and social simulations.

Our objective is that of providing a common ground for all the interested disciplines to share techniques and ideas on a stage where the selection process approach is founded not on one specific method, and even less on established practices and rituals, but rather on an open-minded scientific approach to the the object of study.

This year, the conference focuses on the foremost of Reputation relatives, trust, and their effects together on the economy, and on the society as a whole. What is the link between reputation and trust on one side, and social well-being, equality and happiness on the other? We invite contributions on reputation and trust, and how these come to effect the society of agents that use them, ranging from web reputation platforms to informal models of gossip. Trust and reputation as means to build social capital and to overcome inequality and misunderstandings are deeply needed from society just now.

TOPICS

We invite papers from all scientific communities working on reputation.

Topics for ICORE 2011 include but are not limited to:

* Theory of reputation
* Simulation of reputation
* Computational models of reputation
* Agent reputation models
* Ontologies of reputation
* Logical formalization of reputation
* Experimental evidence of reputation diffusion
* Reputation-based e-government, e-learning, e-business
* Reputation in p2p systems
* Reputation in grid environments
* Reputation for partner selection
* Incentives in reputation mechanisms
* Image and reputation
* Reputation management and optimisation
* Reputation and social networks
* Reputation and norms
* Reputation and altruism, reciprocity, and cooperation
* Reputation and trust
* Reputation for sabotage tolerance in large-scale applications
* Reputation and exchange
* Reputation and institutions
* Reputation and social capital
* Corporate and firm reputation
* Reputation and peer review
* Reputation, trust, and societal cohesion
* Reputation, trust and equality

SUBMISSIONS INSTRUCTIONS

Please check the conference website (http://2011.icore.name) where detailed information on how to submit papers will appear.

Submission is in two steps: extended abstract first, followed by an open discussion phase, then full paper. See important dates above.

REVIEW CRITERIA

Papers should present novel ideas related to reputation, clearly motivated by problems from current practice or applied research.

We expect claims to be substantiated by theoretical or formal analysis, experimental evaluations, comparative studies, and so on. Authors are also encouraged to submit application papers. Application papers are expected to address an indication of the real world relevance of the problem that is solved, including a description of the deployment domain, and some form of evaluation of performance, usability, or superiority to alternative approaches.

Call for Papers: a planned special issue of "Real World Economics Revue"

2011-01-24T10:41:00.000+01:00

Call for contributions on the Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange: A special issue/section of "Real World Economics Review"

Whilst traditionally Economics focuses on markets where the mechanisms of price and economic rationality might dominate, we call for contributions that consider a wider class of social phenomena.

That is target systems which:

involve the passing of value in a more general sense, such as traditional value-transmission systems, informal sharing between friends, alternative currencies, general sytems to regulate and support cooperation, as well as more traditional markets
might crucially involve other social mechanisms such as social networks, group membership, social norms, reputation, friendship, altruism, kinship, semantically rich communication etc. as well as those of price
require research approaches that differ from those traditionally used in economics including agent-based simulation, qualitative approaches, ethnography, virtual worlds etc.. as well as those of analytic mathematics

These contributions are intended to form a special issue of the "Real-World Economics Review". This means that submissions must be:

Of interest to the wide audience that reads RWER
To be of a non-technical nature, accessible to an informed and enquiring member of the public
To illustrate any abstract points with worked examples
To be in pure text (txt), PDF, or Word 2003/7 (.doc) format
To be emailed to me, Bruce Edmonds (bruce.edmonds@gmail.com) by June 15th 2011.

Contributions will be initially reviewed by a small program comittee selecting for:

Importance in terms of the novelty and significance of their insight and ideas
We are looking for carefully considered pieces, while unconventional views are actively sought, we are not interested to polemic per se
Interest to and accessibility for a fairly general audience
Relevance to the call in the sense that it goes beyond traditional economics in some of the widenings (a), (b) and (c) listed above (not necessarily all of them).

Final editorial control remains in the hands of the general RWER editor, Edward Fullbrook.

The RWER has a very large readership, so such a special issue could be influential beyond the normal confines of academia.

We are looking forward to your contributions.

Bruce Edmonds, David Hales, Mario Paolucci and Juliette Rouchier

The Slides from SCIVE 2010

2010-09-21T15:57:00.003+02:00

Are now online at:

http://cfpm.org/scive/#Slides

Roger Ballard's Final Title: The Operation of Transjurisdictional Value Transfer Systems in the Contemporary Global Order: a comparative perspective

2010-09-10T15:34:00.000+02:00

I have seen the slides and it looks good to me.

Bruce

Comment on RWER blog: 5 suggested common themes for an Economics that takes its subject matter seriously

2010-08-10T13:26:00.000+02:00

This somewhat connects with the subject matter of SCIVE, in particular setting the context for a wider and better economics.

Read it at: http://wp.me/pGd5z-ti

What is the value of food?

2010-07-23T12:22:00.002+02:00

Have a look at this blog item discussing food prices.

The meaning of SCIVE

2010-06-22T17:11:00.003+02:00

What does SCIVE mean? If you google for it, you will find that a quite obscure reference to the Urban dictionary - my reading, that should be supported by some native reader, is that it's considered a misspelling or an assonance with "shirk". It is associated with words as "lazy", "sloath", "relax", and "beer" - all of which are fine with me (although I guess that in the urban dictionary, nothing is far removed from "beer.")

On the science side, we have SCIVE, a simulation core for intelligent Virtual Environments (IVEs); the CiteSeerX paper is yearless but other works on the same can be found (ex. Christian Fröhlich & Marc Erich Latoschik (2008). Incorporating the Actor Model into SCIVE on a Semantic Level. In: SEARIS Workshop at the IEEE VR2008, Reno, USA, march, Pages 61-64; Marc Erich Latoschik, Christian Fröhlich, Alexander Wendler: Scene Synchronization in Close Coupled World Representations Using SCIVE. IJVR 5(3): 47-52 (2006))

New Invited Speakers: Rosaria Conte (ISTC/CNR) and Mats Eriksson, (Ripple)

2010-06-18T14:29:00.001+02:00

We are very please that we have two more invited speakers for SCIVE 2010:

Rosaria Conte (ISTC/CNR) will talk on Social Dynamics and ICT
Mats Eriksson, (Ripple) will talk on Towards P2P money - Ripple and beyond

SCIVE 2010 Programme

2010-06-16T18:28:00.000+02:00

9:00 - 10:00

Roger Ballard, Informal Hawala/Hundi Systems of Value Transfer (Invited speaker)

10:00 - 10:30 Coffee-break

10:30 - 12:30

Anamaria Berea, Network Externalities in Hawala Exchanges
Bruce Edmonds, Obligation, trust and information in an Agent-Based Model of the Hawala System of International Value Exchange
Sarah Wolf, Antoine Mandel, Steffen Furst, and Carlo Jaeger, Prices as conventions in an agent based model of growing economies

12:30 - 14:00 lunch, posters and demos

14:00 - 16:00

Rosaria Conte, Social Dynamics and ICT (Invited Speaker)
Victorien Barbet, Renaud Bourles, and Juliette Rouchier, Evolving informal cooperatives for a risky activity when networks matter
Mario Paolucci, Emergence of Money on a Network Topology
David Hales, Towards a Financial Commons?

16:00 - 16:30 coffee-break

16:30 - 18:30 Discussion - future projects and directions

The Venus Project

2010-05-30T14:59:00.009+02:00

Hello everybody,

I was planning to contribute to the SCIVE blog with a series of reviews about what already exists on the Internet. I'll distinguish between scholar contributions and - it's difficult to find a name that is not a negative like un-academic or not-scholar - applied ones.

The Venus Project looks at first sight as a science fiction work - and a dated one too. However, it's not about science fiction technologies and fantastic buildings. It contains an utopian vision that has to say something on value and on money. I quote from the introduction to the project:

An Obsolete Monetary System

The money-based system evolved centuries ago. All of the world's economic systems - socialism, communism, fascism, and even the vaunted free enterprise system - perpetuate social stratification, elitism, nationalism, and racism, primarily based on economic disparity. As long as a social system uses money or barter, people and nations will seek to maintain the economic competitive edge or, if they cannot do so by means of commerce they will by military intervention. We still utilize these same outmoded methods.

...
For example, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, whose function is presumed to be conducting research into ways of achieving higher crop yields per acre, actually pays farmers not to produce at full-capacity. The monetary system tends to hold back the application of these methods that we know would best serve the interests of people and the environment.
----
Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

By the way, this is a good place to say that one of the main points that make me so enthusiastic about the SCIVE project is because it is utopian. In planning the world, the 20th century has relied on ideologies. Now, depending on the point of view, ideology has gone or has been unified. The problem for the 21th century is to start planning again, and with more freedom of movement. So, I do welcome science fiction.

SCIVE 2010 gets support also from ESSA

2010-04-29T18:16:00.000+02:00

the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) has agreed to give the SCIVE'2010 workshop €1000 under some reasonable conditions. Along with the AssystICT funding this should mean we are able to provide some support to those young/underrepresented researchers with some of their costs.

Submission deadline extended to 12th May!

2010-04-29T10:56:00.000+02:00

Graciously we have decided to extend the submission deadline to 12th of May in response to a couple of requests. This has nothing to do with the fact that I am still working on my model - really! ;-)

Domenico Parisi and Edoardo Mollona join SCIVE PC

2010-04-29T10:54:00.001+02:00

I am very please to announce that

Prof. Domenico Parisi (ISTC-CNR, Rome)
Dr. Edoardo Mollona (Univ. of Bologna)

Have aggreed to join the PC of SCIVE'2010

Papers by the invited speaker at SCIVE 2010 on Hawala/IVTS systems

2010-04-06T13:50:00.000+02:00

Can be found at: http://www.casas.org.uk/papers/hawala.html

Including:

These very clearly show how a trust-based system can drastically improve efficiency and flexibility.

Some papers on "Generalised Exchange"...

2010-04-02T16:24:00.000+02:00

...which seems to cover a lot of what we call "Informal Exchange".

The Emergence of Generalized Exchange by Indirect Reciprocity, Anders Biel, Daniel Eek, Tommy Gärling and Mathias Gustafsson -- http://www.springerlink.com/content/qp585m5tu4404761/
Multiplexity, generalized exchange and cooperation in organizations: a case study, Emmanuel Lazegaa and Philippa E. Pattison -- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-8733(99)00002-7
Generalized Exchange and Social Dilemmas, Toshio Yamagishi and Karen S. Cook -- http://www.jstor.org/pss/2786661
Towards a Theory of Large-Scale Generalized Exchange, Levine, Sheen. and Shah, Sonali -- http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/7/6/7/pages107678/p107678-1.php
Generalized Exchange, Social Identity, and Non-Anonymity, Triplett, Jennifer. and Thye, Shane -- http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/8/3/0/5/pages183055/p183055-1.php
Mechanisms of Generalized Exchange, Baker, Wayne E. and Levine, Sheen S -- http://ssrn.com/abstract=1352101
Generalized Exchange, Peter Bearman -- http://www.jstor.org/stable/2782312
The emergence of generalized exchange, Nobuyuki Takahashi -- http://www.jstor.org/stable/3003889
Expectations of a generalized exchange system and ingroup favoritism: an experimental study of bounded reciprocity, Kiyonari T -- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12101584
Spontaneous formation of generalized exchange system: An experimental study of discriminating altruism, Nobuyuki Takahashi, http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/199917/000019991799A0512436.php
Building Solidarity through Generalized Exchange: A Theory of Reciprocity, Linda D. Molm, Jessica L. Collett, David R. Schaefer -- http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/517900

SCIVE 2010 publication

2010-04-01T17:37:00.000+02:00

We have an "in principle" agreement from the editor of Real-World Economics Review to publish a selection of revised papers resulting from the SCIVE 2010 workshop in a special section.

SCIVE 2010 has sponsorship from ASSYST

2010-03-02T18:56:00.001+01:00

This means that at least some bursaries will be able to be made to those with a full paper accepted at SCIVE 2010. More details when we know them.

Roger Ballard of the of the Centre for Applied South Asian Studies will speak at SCIVE 2010

2010-02-21T16:48:00.000+01:00

Roger Ballard the Director of the Centre for Applied South Asian Studies has accepted an invitation to be an invited speaker at SCIVE 2010. He will talk on the general Informal Hawala/Hundi Systems of Value Transfer (title yet to be decided).

CfP: 1st workshop on the Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange @ ECCS 2010, Lisbon

2010-02-21T16:42:00.003+01:00

Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange
SCIVE 2010

September 16^th, 2010, Lisbon

at the European Complex Systems Society Conference

Submission deadline: April 30th 2010

This workshop aims to promote inquiry into social phenomena that involve value-exchange, and in particular on networks for credit and value transfer, under the effect of recent technological and societal change. Informal value transfer and credit networks involve people or institutions providing credit or value transfer services based on social trust rather than laws and contracts. Such networks constitute a complex system that have been relatively unstudied yet have a significant impact on people's lives. This exchange often involves many social processes and mechanisms other than those usually considered by economists, including: social norms, altruism, reputation, trust, group membership, friendship, kinship, identity, status etc. Examples range from local baby-sitting circles up to the international Hawala/Hundi systems of value transfer.

Full details at: http://cfpm.org/scive/