Greetings Bas,

I am also a newbie to this field, having just started my PhD - but our subjects
overlap a great deal. I'm just in the process of starting a project that has a
lot of cross-over with your work, and it would be great to co-operate / keep in
touch / work together.

(Apologies to others on the list if this is not of interest to you... it might
be to some, though.)

I am right at the start, so quite how possible all this is I don't know! But all
being well, I'm going to be doing the following:

1. Creating a (probably Java) program that can

a. Get supplier data from an organisation (i.e. take in an already existing
accounts file, rather than resorting to inputting data again)

b. Automatically geo-code it (easy enough in the UK with postcode data, though
it could easily enough have other methods for geo-coding: self-location on a
screen map, or even sending in geo-data from a mobile phone.)

c. Allow a geographical analysis of that data (while keeping supplier
confidentiality, if necessary) i.e. creating a 'score' of how much is spent
'locally'. 

2. Putting this into its economic theory context. For example, how justified is
it to claim that more local money flow is always 'a good thing?' How should it
be balanced against external flows? When does it start being damaging
protectionism? Is it suitable only for areas attempting certain kinds of
regeneration? At what point does money flow cause too much local inflation? On
your website, you mention the negative impace of NAFTA: can we put local flows
into a macro context, to show what impacts such trade agreements have locally -
on ,say, money flows, and how money flows affect social cohesion? And how do we
build all this into a model that can help us - and others - intuitively
visualise all this?

I will be working with Justin Sacks and, hopefully, a University's supplier list
on this (not sure which yet). Justin Sacks pioneered the use of the LM3 tool
when at the New Economics Foundation:

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/tools_lm3.aspx

(See 'Plugging the Leaks' and 'the Money Trail' docs on the right for more...)

These tools are aimed at helping organisations to map their own money flows, and
take action to make them more local. (Apologies if you know all this
already...)  

I'm hoping to contribute towards bridging the gap between useful analysis tool
and theoretical understanding. I mean 'bridge the gap' in two ways:

1. As I just mentioned, the tools should be theoretically and economically as
sound as possible (without disappearing into pointless abstraction.)

2. Micro-simulation and statistical tools can be made to work 'on the ground', I
believe. For example, if the tools give us a small sub-set of suppliers' money
flows, can we create a database of 'typical' categorised suppliers, which would
allow us to plug known data into probable data, to produce an analysis that
goes several flows deeper? And can we come to know, statistically, just how
accurate this analysis is likely to be, within certain boundaries?

This is also important because modelling local money flows in great detail is
computationally expensive; if we can get these models to demonstrate consistent
results for certain local features and produce more analytically tractable
results, that would be good.

A first next step might be to define what we think are the biggest challenges to
pursuing this kind of 'local flow' work. There are, for me, already three quite
different, but connected, categories:

1. Creating tools that can be used by organisations in as many different global
settings as possible (so perhaps creating modular tools).

2. Socio-economic analysis and simulation (and how we validate this) to give
formal backing to the tools (My favourite quote on this: Krugman - 'we just
don't see what we can't formalise'. This is inescapably true - so the more we
have successful formal models, and connect them to real world use, the more
likely they are to be accepted as 'valid'. Quite how we go about this is a
different matter!)

3. Visualising local flows analysis, so that their meaning becomes as
intuitively comprehensible as possible. (E.g. could be very successful if it
can be shown what impact things like NAFTA ultimately have on the social fabric
of a local area, as a consequence of local capital-flow being re-directed.)

I realise that what I'm talking about might translate with difficulty to areas
with little infrastructure; this is a problem that Justin has picked up on
before, since at some point he's keen to do some work in Africa on this. But it
would be really interesting to think through possible solutions.

OK, enough from me! Any more thoughts welcome... I'm on Skype, and so maybe a
VOIP-call at some point might be in order.

Bye for now,

Dan Olner
School of Geography,
Leeds University
UK

---
http://www.coveredinbees.org
~~~
'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,
build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.' - R. Buckminster
Fuller


Quoting Bas Leurs <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear all,
> 
> As relative newbies in the field of simulation in social sciences, we have
> been following the recent discussion on the list with quite some interest.
> The large amount of enthousiastic responses invited us to also give it a try
> with our project on this list.
> 
> We, from Dutch NGO STRO (“Social Trade Organisation”), are working on a
> research project on the life-time of money flows in poor economic rural
> areas. Our goal is to develop a simulation computer program which can
> analyze local money flows and identify parameters which affect and determine
> the life-time of these flows. Such a simulation program could act as a
> research tool providing a better understanding of village economies.
> 
> We have identified several economic modeling techniques, such as Social
> Accounting Matrices (SAM), multi-agent simulation, microsimulation and
> Computable General Equilibrium (CGE). For our purposes the combined use of
> CGE and microsimulation seems to be most suitable.
> 
> We are now searching for information on the possibilities of simulation in
> this field:
> 1. What simulation techniques would be best to analyze local money flows?
> 2. What software systems do already exist in this field?
> 3. What academic articles or (currently running) research projects cover
> these areas?
> 
> By posting the aim of our project on SIMSOC we hope to get
> suggestions/tips/remarks on this topic. Moreover, if it raises interest by
> third parties we could perhaps cooperate on this project.
> 
> Many thanks in advance for your comments!
> 
> Social Trade Organisation (STRO)
> Rinke Hoekstra
> Bas Leurs
> Bert Veerman
> www.strohalm.nl
>