Economic application of nonlinear dynamics, microscopic agent-based modelling, and the use of artificial intelligence techniques as learning devices of boundedly rational actors are among the most exciting interdisciplinary ventures of economic theory over the past decade. This volume provides us with a most fascinating series of examples on "complexity in action" exemplifying the scope and explanatory power of these innovative approaches.

This book analyses situations in which individual agents, who might be different from each other, interact and produce behaviour on the aggregate level which does not correspond to that of the average actor. This leads to aggregate outcomes which would be impossible to explain in a more standard approach. Aggregation generates structure and, as a result, interaction and heterogeneity can be handled and we no longer have to rely on the over-simplified reduction of the behaviour of the economy to that of a "rational" individual.

This book reconciles the existence of technical trading with the Efficient Market Hypothesis. By analyzing a well-known agent-based model, the Santa Fe Institute Artificial Stock Market (SFI-ASM), it finds that when selective forces are weak, financial evolution cannot guarantee that only the fittest trading rules will survive. Its main contribution lies in the application of standard results from population genetics which have widely been neglected in the agent-based community.

This handbook contains surveys of state-of-the-art concepts, systems, applications, best practices as well as contemporary research in the intersection between IT and finance. Included are recent trends and challenges, IT systems and architectures in finance, essential developments and case studies on management information systems, and service oriented architecture modeling. The book shows a broad range of applications, e.g. in banking, insurance, trading and in non-financial companies. Essentially, all aspects of IT in finance are covered.

The theory on the evolution of preferences deals with the endogenous formation of preference relations in strategic situations. It is related to the field of evolutionary game theory. In this book we analyze the role and the influence of general, possibly non-expected utility preferences in such an evolutionary setup. In particular, we demonstrate that preferences which diverge from von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility may potentially prove to be successful under evolutionary pressures.

This book offers a practical guide to Agent Based economic modeling, adopting a “learning by doing” approach to help the reader master the fundamental tools needed to create and analyze Agent Based models. After providing them with a basic “toolkit” for Agent Based modeling, it present and discusses didactic models of real financial and economic systems in detail. While stressing the main features and advantages of the bottom-up perspective inherent to this approach, the book also highlights the logic and practical steps that characterize the model building procedure. A detailed description of the underlying codes, developed using R and C, is also provided. In addition, each didactic model is accompanied by exercises and applications designed to promote active learning on the part of the reader. Following the same approach, the book also presents several complementary tools required for the analysis and validation of the models, such as sensitivity experiments, calibration exercises, economic network and statistical distributions analysis. By the end of the book, the reader will have gained a deeper understanding of the Agent Based methodology and be prepared to use the fundamental techniques required to start developing their own economic models. Accordingly, “Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents” will be of particular interest to graduate and postgraduate students, as well as to academic institutions and lecturers interested in including an overview of the AB approach to economic modeling in their courses.

This book will appeal to the lay-reader with an interest in the history of what is today termed ‘Econophysics’, looking at various works throughout the ages that have led to the emergence of this field. It begins with a discussion of the philosophers and scientists who have contributed to this discipline, before moving on to considering the contributions of different institutions, books, journals and conferences in nurturing the subject.

Dynamic oligopolistic competition has implications both for the strategic management of firms and for the design of an effective competition policy. Consequently, the present book considers the issue from a private and social perspective. It discusses the potential pro- and anticollusive effects of long-term business strategies, especially for cooperation and reinvestment in production, financing and management compensation, in markets with fluctuating demand. The method of supergame theory is applied to integrate long-run decisions and different types of demand into the analysis. Aside from its contributions to the theoretical literature, the book provides valuable insights into the design of competition policy. The observed development of prices is an indicator of the extent of collusion in the market and can thereby be used to assess antitrust regulation in certain business areas, and to focus the resources of competition authorities on markets where conditions are conducive to collusion.

The focus of this volume is on the development of new approaches for the market-conform valuation of newly issued derivatives. The first chapter presents a flexible approach to construct the binomial process of the underlying asset price by using a simultaneously backward and forward induction algorithm. This framework can be used to price and hedge a wide range of plain-vanilla and exotic options. In the second chapter this new approach is compared to existing models using a sample of plain-vanilla options, American call options and European Barrier options from two competing markets. In the third chapter new methods to value American-style options via Monte Carlo simulations in accordance with given market prices are discussed. After a short introduction to Monte Carlo methods, two new approaches are proposed. These new frameworks are illustrated via pricing examples for standard American put options.

Provides an overview of the microeconometric evaluation methods for evaluation of labour market and other public policies. This book focuses on the propensity score matching method and gives guidance for its implementation. It uses this method to evaluate the employment effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany.