This volume presents revised versions of the papers presented at the 4th International Workshop on Multi-agent Based Simulation (MABS 2003), a workshop federated with the2ndInternationalJointConferenceonAutonomousAgentsandMulti-agentSystems (AAMAS 2003), which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2003. In addition to the papers presented at the workshop, three additional papers have been included in this volume (Robertson, Noto et al., and Marietto et al.). Multiagent Based Simulation (MABS) is a vibrant interdisciplinary area which brings together researchers active within the agent-based social simulation community (ABSS) and the multiagent systems community (MAS). These two communities have different, indeed somewhat divergent, goals. The focus of ABSS is on simulating and synthesizing social behaviors in order to understand observed social systems (human, animal and even electronic) via the development and testing of new models and c- cepts. MAS focuses instead on the solution of hard engineering problems related to the construction, deployment and ef?cient operation of multiagent-based systems.

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
MABS Techniques for MAS.- Engineering Emergent Behaviour: A Vision.- Employment Decisions Supporting Organizations of Autonomous Agents.- Towards Verification and Validation in Multiagent-Based Systems and Simulations: Analyzing Different Learning Bargaining Agents.- Weak Interaction and Strong Interaction in Agent Based Simulations.- Economics, Exchange, and Influence in VirtualWorlds.- Using Qualitative Exchange Values to Improve the Modelling of Social Interactions.- Bilateral Tradings with and without Strategic Thinking.- Monetary Policy and Banks' Loan Supply Rules to Harness Asset Bubbles and Crashes.- Social Change: Exploring Design Influence.- Social Prejudice: Cognitive Modelling and Simulation Findings.- MABS Techniques for RealWorld Modelling.- A Methodology for Eliciting and Modelling Stakeholders' Representations with Agent Based Modelling.- Modelling a European Decision Making Process with Heterogeneous Public Opinion and Lobbying: The Case of the Authorization Procedure for Placing Genetically Modified Organisms on the Market.- Evaluation of Usability of Dial-a-Ride Systems by Social Simulation.- The Strategy Hypercube: Exploring Strategy Space Using Agent-Based Models.- Understanding and Classifying MABS.- A Classification of Paradigmatic Models for Agent-Based Social Simulation.