Simulated Economy Tutorial

Neural network based computer vision models also existed for decades. They weren't very good and weren't really used, till early 2010s when people figured out how to make them work. Now they are vastly superior to all the other ways.

This is quite common across the sciences. Some technique doesn't seem to work because of missing crucial insights or technology. Then somebody fills the gaps, and the technique works.

These types of models in economics might or might not become viable at some point.

"The models might become viable at some point" is very different from the original claim at the top level of this comment chain, though, which made a positive assertion that agent-based models are better. The parent comment to yours was right to call out that claim, and it offered a reasonable basis for that counterargument at the same time.

"realistic" is an interesting word, because it can have different connotations.

We can write a very accurate quantum mechanical model for the oxygen atom. But you can't actually simulate it without a galaxy sized classical computer. But it is very realistic=accurate model.

Or you can write and easily simulate a non-realistic semiclassical model. This one is a realistic=efficiently simulatable model.

Obviously a fully agent made model is more realistic in the "accurate" sense, because it correctly models the underlying reality. But if you make realistic agents, you have something inefficient (non realistic in the "simulatable" sense).

There are plenty of people working on the application of ML in economics, including NN methods, and including in macro.

That’s a totally different class of model to this agent based approach. People in the (small) agent based modeling community have been pushing their stuff for decades to no effect.

Sure it’s possible that there’s some amazing advance I can’t see coming in the future but as of now I would not recommend anyone pursue ABM.