On this episode of The Flux, agent-based models (ABMs) have long lived on the fringes of mainstream economics but that’s changing. Doyne Farmer breaks down how advances in computing and data are fueling a new era of bottom-up modeling. He explains where ABMs outperform traditional models, why certain fields (like epidemiology and traffic systems) adopted them earlier, and how economics is finally catching up. We explore the structural and behavioral complexity that ABMs are uniquely suited to handle and what it will take to shift institutional thinking in policy and business.