  A very timely issue for economic agent-based models (ABMs) is their empirical
estimation. This paper describes a line of research that could resolve the
issue by using machine learning techniques, using multi-layer artificial neural
networks (ANNs), or so called Deep Nets. The seminal contribution by Hinton et
al. (2006) introduced a fast and efficient training algorithm called Deep
Learning, and there have been major breakthroughs in machine learning ever
since. Economics has not yet benefited from these developments, and therefore
we believe that now is the right time to apply Deep Learning and multi-layered
neural networks to agent-based models in economics.
