Learning to trade and mediate

In this paper we study the behavior of boundedly rational agents in a two g ood economy where trading is costly with respect to time. All individuals h ave a fixed time budget and may spend time for the production of good one, the production of good two and trading. They update their strategies, which determine their time allocation, according to a simple imitation type lear ning rule with noise. In a setup with two different type of agents with dif ferent production technologies we show by the means of simulations that bot h direct trade and trade via mediators who specialize in trading can emerge . We can also observe the transition from a pure production economy via dir ect trade to an economy with mediated trade.