SOCRATE is an Italian highly interdisciplinary project – among cognitive and social scientists, software designers, and trainers of economic operators – project about the effect of reputation on industrial districts.

By means of Agent Based Modelling and Simulation, a cognitive theory of social evaluation (Conte and Paolucci, 2002) will be applied to studying the added value of reputation on firms’ competitiveness. A cross-methodological experimental design will be extensively applied: natural evidence – collected through case studies – will be compared with artificial findings, collected by means of an agent-based model of partner selection within productive cycles. The effect of reputation will be observed on several measures, including quality and price of products, volume of transactions, and ultimately, the very dynamics of firms within the same district. :::Project website