Abstract
In this work we further the investigation into the functioning of the Maghribi Traders Coalition – a historically significant traders collective that operated along the North African coast between the 10th and 13th centuries. They acted as a closed group whose interactions were governed by informal institutions (i.e. norms). Historical accounts point to an apprenticeship system that was in force in this society. In this work we propose an agent-based model of the society with the apprenticeship mechanism and analyse the role the mechanism may have played in the removal of cheaters from their trade relationship networks.
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Notes
- 1.
This would contrast with Southern European societies such as the Italian city states of Genoa and Venice that operated based on formal institutions.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Goldberg’s statistical analysis [11] allocates the fraction of gossip in letter content at around 20 %.
- 5.
It is safe to use the male form. The trader community was of patriarchal nature, with men performing trade operations, while their (potentially multiple) wives managed their different homesteads and warehouses. The geographic spread of marriages in principle allowed the development of extensive trade operations across the Mediterranean [1, 13].
- 6.
Note that the proposition of partner choice based on status similarity is compatible with the principles proposed by Podolny [20] in the context of organisational studies. He suggests that in the face of market uncertainty organisations choose partners they had previous experience with and which are of similar status.
- 7.
This suggestion was raised by one of the anonymous reviewers.
- 8.
We ignore any lifespan before or following active tradership.
- 9.
A representative set of simulation runs for one parameter sweep takes about three weeks on current hardware (Intel i7 8-core with 12 GB RAM).
- 10.
We use ‘round’ to describe a simulation step, as opposed to ‘run’ that describes a complete simulation execution over the parametrised number of rounds.
- 11.
This includes the borderline case of \( lowerJahDifference \) = 1.0, which nevertheless still performs worse compared to the apprenticeship-free variant.
- 12.
Max. difference: \(\sim \)0.042; min. diff.: \(\sim \)0.025; \(\sigma \): 0.0067. See [6] for the resulting graphs.
- 13.
The Geniza letters considered by Goldberg [13] cover the period from 990 until the early 13th century.
- 14.
Note: This effectively represents intergenerational ‘forgetfulness’ on the social level.
- 15.
In this context we wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their contribution.
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Frantz, C., Purvis, M.K., Nowostawski, M., Savarimuthu, B.T.R. (2015). Analysing the Apprenticeship System in the Maghribi Traders Coalition. In: Grimaldo, F., Norling, E. (eds) Multi-Agent-Based Simulation XV. MABS 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9002. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14627-0_13
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