In contrast to mainstream economics, complexity theory conceives the economy as a complex system of heterogeneous interacting agents characterised by limited information and bounded rationality. Agent Based Models (ABMs) are the analytical and computational tools developed by the proponents of this emerging methodology. Aimed at students and scholars of contemporary economics, this book includes a comprehensive toolkit for agent-based computational economics, now quickly becoming the new way to study evolving economic systems. Leading scholars in the field explain how ABMs can be applied fruitfully to many real-world economic examples and represent a great advancement over mainstream approaches. The essays discuss the methodological bases of agent-based approaches and demonstrate step-by-step how to build, simulate and analyse ABMs and how to validate their outputs empirically using the data. They also present a wide set of applications of these models to key economic topics, including the business cycle, labour markets, and economic growth.
Delli Gatti, Domenico: - Domenico Delli Gatti is Economics Professor at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Department of Economics and Finance. He is Director of the Complexity Lab in Economics. His research interests focus on the role of financial factors (firms' and banks' financial fragility) in business fluctuations. Together with Mauro Gallegati he has provided important contributions to agent based macroeconomics in the book Macroeconomics from the Bottom Up (2013). He has published extensively in high ranking journals and is editor of the Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination.
Fagiolo, Giorgio: - Giorgio Fagiolo is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa. His research interests include agent-based computational economics; empirics and theory of economic networks; and the statistical properties of microeconomic and macroeconomic dynamics. His papers have been published in numerous journals including Science, the Journal of Economic Geography, and the Journal of Applied Econometrics.
Gallegati, Mauro: - Mauro Gallegati is Professor of Economics at the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, and he has been a visiting professor in several Universities, including Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. He has published journal papers in numerous subject areas including agent based economics, complexity, economic history, nonlinear mathematics, and econophysics, and he sits on the editorial board of several economic journals and book series.
