Sensitivity analysis of an agent-based model of culture's consequences for trade

This paper describes the analysis of an agent-based model's sensitivity to changes in parameters that describe the agents' cultural background, relational parameters, and parameters of the decision functions. As agent-based models may be very sensitive to small changes in parameter values, it is of the essence to know for which changes the model is most sensitive. A long-standing metamodeling-based approach of sensitivity analysis is applied to the agent-based model. The analysis is differentiated for homogeneous and heterogeneous agent populations. Intrinsic stochastic effects of the agent-based model are taken into account. The paper describes how an appropriate regression model has been selected and analyses the parameter's variance contributions in general and in specific cultural settings. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.