The spontaneous emergence of financial intermediation is the object of An Experimental Approach to the Study of Banking Intermediation: The banknet Simulator.

The author builds his model on a pre-existing one, ``BankNet,'' initially designed by one of the original Swarm programmers as an ``exercise''. The model is then employed to analyze a somewhat different topic. Here is an example of the re-usability of Object-Oriented code and of the possibility of ``building upon'' a pre-existing model.

Transaction costs, economies of scale, agents' heterogeneity, and strategic interaction are the ``real world'' features that, according to this model, lead to the endogenous creation of intermediaries. One of Swarm's library allows for the ``real time'' graphical representation of the credit links being established in the system. Such (completely decentralized) emergent phenomenon is hence monitored very effectively.

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