David Pennock returns to the question of how to call the field the lies at the intersection (or maybe crossroads) of economics and computation. As I described in my first blog post, about a year ago, many of us were loosely using the term “algorithmic game theory” for this field as well, but I have to agree that this puts a wrong spin on the field. Economics does go beyond game theory and “CS ∩ Econ” goes beyond “CS ∩ GT”, and so should the name, if only to covey this message. This would also fit more naturally various areas that are often considered part of “AGT” but are really not GT: from computation of market equilibria, to prediction markets, to social networks, and much more.
So let me second David’s suggestion of Algorithmic Economics which also combines nicely with Algorithmic Game Theory yielding Algorithmic Game Theory and Economics. This sounds better than the wider “computation and economics”, while the perhaps more precise “computational economics” is sort of taken (although we could think of a hostile take-over, I suppose).
Maybe I should change the name of my blog to Algorithmic Game Theory and Economics?
what about computational economics?
I added a link now to how “computational economics” is taken.
By seeing the contents of the following two handbooks of “computational economics”
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/601141/description#description
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/660847/description#description
and the book of reference of “algorithmic game theory”
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521872820
i would call the first “Simulation Economics ”, that is the use of computing applied tools for simulating economic situations (or how economists use computer tools), ACE beeing the most used simulation methods, and the second “Computational Complexity Economics”, that is the use of theory of computing tools such as computational complexity for studying economic theory problems (or how TCS people sees economics).
On the other hand, given the intersection of both fields (i.e. part 1 in AGT book and Handbook Vol 1 Chapter 1 titled Economic Topics), i would suggest a merge i/o a take over.
Algorithmic economics sounds like the better choice.
I like the sound of “Algorithmic Economics”, but I am afraid non-algorithms folks — database or data mining, machine learning, even programming languages and logic people who are for example studying bidding languages — might feel left out. Also, “Algorithmic Economics” may not encourage empirical studies. Apologies, I dont have other viable suggestions (Economics and Computing? Computing is in ACM title, Also SIAM J. Computing, ….).
— Metoo
ps: Market Algorithms fit the local context of Research in Google, but may not have broader fit.
[…] Game Theory has emerged as something of a standard within the CS theory community. [Update: Noam suggests Algorithmic Game Theory and Economics and has renamed his blog accordingly.] The phrase […]
Somehow I initially forgot the name Algorithmic Game Theory in my post, even though it’s probably the closest we have to a standard, and have now added it to my list.
I also updated my post with your suggestion: Algorithmic Game Theory and Economics. Am I right that you’ve just now changed the name of your blog to this?
Metoo: I agree it’s not inclusive enough and I also can’t think of a good alternative that is.
A fun one I was playing around with before is Economatics (or the reverse Autonomics, I think via Lance), as in economics+automation. I added that to the post too.
I’m playing with the name, seeing how it “feels”. Just made another change…
I still haven’t decided whether to keep the new name or roll back with the next post.
I initially parsed the proposed new blog title as “(Algorithmic Game Theory) and (Economics)”.
I’m an economist.
We have some gaps in our understanding of what you people do. I think that the reason is partly the one so eloquently exposed in the following article:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2030520
As is the case in every scientific field that uses analytical tools, economics benefits from the machinery of scientific computing.
I agree with the previous comment on “simulation economics”. However, I firmly believe that algorithmic economics is a misnomer. There is much more to economics than that.
I have used the term “algorithmic game-theory/economics” in describing my research area. More recently I coined the term “Automated Economics” for the same purpose. I know Kamal Jain also used something similar, I forget what.
I like the “slash” trick since it seems to solve the parsing problem of “(Algorithmic Game Theory) and (Economics)”.
“Algorithmic Game Theory and Economics” seems to imply that GT and economics are disjoint.
As a bad attempt at a portmanteau, I’ll suggest “Econorithms”, (a la Econometrics) or “Algo-Economics” (a la micro- and macro-economics) or the plain-ugly “Algonomics”.
As a serious suggestion, I think “computational economics” is the best name for the intersection of CS and Economics (as in studying Econ from a CS perspective); the people who have “taken” it have applied it quite meaningfully, and do not give any indication that there is no room for theoretical work under this umbrella. Since we wish to find a collective name for the more theoretical aspects of this field(game theory and mechanism design, for example, but also bidding languages etc), I think “Theoretical Computational Economics” is the most appropriate.
“Algorithmic Game Theory and Economics” is problematic as it is naturally parsed as “(Algorithmic Game Theory) and (Economics)”
Discussing the same question with some colleagues a while ago, I proposed the name “Econoinformatics”. My reasoning was that it emphasizes the combination of the two fields (Economics and CS) without giving undue priority to any of their subfields (e.g. game theory, algorithms). Also, the term “bioinformatics” is already commonly used to denote the intersection of CS and Biology, so we could start a naming convention that “X-informatics” refers to the intersection of CS and X, for all X such that the resulting word is easy to pronounce.
A name which describes it a type of economics could be a conflicting move, since the traditional economists do not consider us economists. Some do and some do not. In private one-on-one discussion when you have their trust they could tell you about it.
On the other hand describing it as a type of cs could be less conflicting, as we would saying we are “complementing you”.
To balance the downside of the former, there is actually a big upside too. It gives us a fair credit of our work, such as ad-auctions.
For the latter we also should consider other intersections of CS and Economics. Recently I have been involved in two papers analyzing the user experience and economics (you may call it Human-Economics (System) Interaction just like Human-Computers (System) Interaction). One was submitted to ICS (rejected), and the other was submitted to CHI (accepted).
If we see around, the interaction model of ours with economic systems gives us an opportunity to improve the economic systems by providing better theoretical analysis. A new name should cover this and other future opportunities.
What’s in a name?
From the discussions here, it seems obvious there are many subfields in “CS \cap Econ”, which is really “Internet Economics” when you think about it.
It seems like this field (which we don’t have a name for) attempts to capture more than a subfield of computer science and more than a subfield of Economics.
Is it just a new name we aught to be looking for?
The discipline of biology+cs+statistics that was given as an example above, has many different names like computational biology, bioinformatics, bioengineering, etc. They have an impressive variety of subfields, some more theoretical and some more experimental, all with a clear common goal: advance biological sciences via computational/statistical/mathematical methods.
A post in this blog announced the opening of a program at Penn that sounds like the beginning of a department in econnomics+cs+math. That makes a lot of sense.
Is it really the name of this blog that’s on the table?
I think it doesn’t make logical sense to say that what we do is not part of computational economics. I prefer a wide interpretation of “computational economics” that includes us as well as the other comp. econ. people (perhaps we should approach these people more). Then we can further restrict as desired to “computational microeconomics,” “computational microeconomic theory,” “computational game theory,” “computational mechanism design,” “computational social choice,” etc. (I generally slightly prefer “computational” to “algorithmic” for these phrases just because it sounds more inclusive, though if it was somehow desired to exclude non-algorithmic contributions, “computational” could be replaced by “algorithmic” everywhere… But note that even many of the contributions by theoretical computer scientists are not genuinely algorithmic in nature! In any case, we should educate the rest of the world that “computational” is much broader than “simulation-based” rather than avoiding the issue.)
Perhaps more importantly, consider the problem of making a case for hiring in this area. To outsiders, “algorithmic game theory” probably makes it sound (incorrectly) like a very narrow subtopic studied exclusively by the CS theory community. “Computational economics” is at the same level as “computational biology,” which I think is more reflective of our achievements and our ambitions. And if there is (say) a systems person who is interested in macroeconomic aspects of distributed systems, I wouldn’t want to necessarily exclude that person, even though that really doesn’t sound like “algorithmic game theory” anymore…
one more suggestion, just to avoid the “computational economics issue: CompuEconomics
Btw., as to “econoinformatics,” I’ve always found “bioinformatics” vs. “computational biology” a little confusing. Two attempts at clarifying the difference that I found online are below (not sure of the sources). Given that these suggest that “bioinformatics” is strictly about analyzing data (esp. #2), I’m not sure whether “econoinformatics” is wise… but it could be debated. Some of what we’re doing may be more analogous to biomedical engineering…
#1: http://rbaltman.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/bioinformatics-computational-biology-same-no/
Computational biology = the study of biology using computational techniques. The goal is to learn new biology, knowledge about living sytems. It is about science.
Bioinformatics = the creation of tools (algorithms, databases) that solve problems. The goal is to build useful tools that work on biological data. It is about engineering.
#2: http://archive.nodalpoint.org/node/1510
Bioinformatics: Research, development or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioral or health data, including those to acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze or visualize such data.
Computational Biology: The development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems
Vincent, after your comment now I´ve got more clear the whole issue. The argument is valid for any science so let´s develope it in an abstract setting.
Computational tools, both theoretical such as computational complexity and practical, such as algorithms interact with reality (or its models,i.e sciences)in two ways:
–they can be used to study real systems. That´s computational biology or computational economics or simulation economics. As you say, that´s science.
–or they can be used to create reality. That´s AGT, which create agents which can act economicaly diferently from real agents or mechanisms for them. (which paralles intitutions for human agents in real economics). It is an engineering similar to robotics. So i suggest cibereconomics or roboconomics (i do not like this last one since it can be easily confused with robberconomics).
Hi anon2, thanks for your comment — well, first of all, the phrase “As you say” is not appropriate because I just copy-pasted these definitions without intending to approve them (and certainly without intending to approve the analogous definitions in our context). But I agree there is a creative aspect to what we do that is not very well reflected in these definitions. However, I also know a computational biologist who builds microrobots, and I imagine in general these definitions are subjects of debate. Whatever the outcome, I think we don’t want to introduce many new names with subtle distinctions that outsiders will fail to understand…
From the replies to this post, it does not seem that a consensus is emerging…. Maybe a little more time will do the trick.
(In the sprit of Logicomix) what about Compunomics?
Compunomics – computational economics in one word.
Ii’m in the airport – so maybe somebody already suggested this before 🙂 )
My evolving project may have some relevance. It is concerned with Transfinancial Economics, a new paradigm. Press the badge, or name for the link.
[…] working on “computational economics” in other senses. (See also earlier discussions here and here.) At the same time, having such MS programs certainly doesn’t require that we all […]