We present examples of agent-based and stochastic models of competition and business processes in economics and finance. We start from as simple as possible models, which have microscopic, agent-based, versions and macroscopic treatment in behavior. Microscopic and macroscopic versions of herding model proposed by Kirman and Bass diffusion of new products are considered in this contribution as two basic ideas. Further we demonstrate that general herding behavior can be considered as a background of nonlinear stochastic model of financial fluctuations.
The paper discusses various practical consequences of treating economics and finance as an inherently dynamic and chaotic system. On the theoretical side this looks at the general applicability of the market-making pricing approach to economics in general. The paper also discuses the consequences of the endogenous creation of liquidity and the role of liquidity as a state variable. On the practical side, proposals are made for reducing chaotic behaviour in both housing markets and stock markets.
I sketch a program for a microeconomic theory of the main component of the business cycle as a recurring disequilibrium, driven by incompleteness of the financial market and by information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders. This proposal seeks to incorporate five distinct but connected processes that have been discussed at varying lengths in the literature: the leverage cycle, financial panic, debt deflation, debt overhang, and deleveraging of households. In the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis, policy responses by central banks have addressed only financial panic and debt deflatio…
The accurate characterization of the business cycles in the nonlinear dynamic financial and economic systems in the time of globalization represents a formidable research problem. The central banks and other financial institutions make their decisions on the minimum capital requirements, countercyclical capital buffer allocation and capital investments, going from the precise data on the business cycles. We consider the two possible interaction scenarios, when there are: the linear interactions, and the non-linear interactions. In our opinion, the main parameters of the business cycle may devi…
Understanding cities is central to addressing major global challenges from climate and health to economic resilience. Although increasingly perceived as fundamental socio-economic units, the detailed fabric of urban economic activities is only now accessible to comprehensive analyses with the availability of large datasets. Here, we study abundances of business categories across U.S. metropolitan statistical areas to investigate how diversity of economic activities depends on city size. A universal structure common to all cities is revealed, manifesting self-similarity in internal economic str…
We formulate one methodology to put a value or price on knowledge using well accepted techniques from finance. We provide justifications for these finance principles based on the limitations of the physical world we live in. We start with the intuition for our method to value knowledge and then formalize this idea with a series of axioms and models. To the best of our knowledge this is the first recorded attempt to put a numerical value on knowledge. The implications of this valuation exercise, which places a high premium on any piece of knowledge, are to ensure that participants in any knowle…
In recent years, extreme shocks, such as natural disasters, are increasing in both frequency and intensity, causing significant economic loss to many cities around the world. Quantifying the economic cost of local businesses after extreme shocks is important for post-disaster assessment and pre-disaster planning. Conventionally, surveys have been the primary source of data used to quantify damages inflicted on businesses by disasters. However, surveys often suffer from high cost and long time for implementation, spatio-temporal sparsity in observations, and limitations in scalability. Recently…
In this chapter the complex systems are discussed in the context of economic and business policy and decision making. It will be showed and motivated that social systems are typically chaotic, non-linear and/or non-equilibrium and therefore complex systems. It is discussed that the rapid change in global consumer behaviour is underway, that further increases the complexity in business and management. For policy making under complexity, following principles are offered: openness and international competition, tolerance and variety of ideas, self-reliability and low dependence on external help. …
For any business, planning is a continuous process, and typically business-owners focus on making both long-term planning aligned with a particular strategy as well as short-term planning that accommodates the dynamic market situations. An ability to perform an accurate financial forecast is crucial for effective planning. In this paper, we focus on providing an intelligent and efficient solution that will help in forecasting revenue using machine learning algorithms. We experiment with three different revenue forecasting models, and here we provide detailed insights into the methodology and t…
This paper presents the contemporary Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing as being equivalent to approaches to pricing that emerged before 1700 in the context of Virtue Ethics. This is done by considering the history of science and mathematics in the thirteenth and seventeenth century. An explanation as to why these approaches to pricing were forgotten between 1700 and 2000 is given, along with some of the implications on economics of viewing the Fundamental Theorem as a product of Virtue Ethics. The Fundamental Theorem was developed in mathematics to establish a `theory' that underpinned the …
This is an expanded version of the lecture given at the AMS Short Course on Mean Field Games, on January 13, 2020 in Denver CO. The assignment was to discuss applications of Mean Field Games in finance and economics. I need to admit upfront that several of the examples reviewed in this chapter were already discussed in book form. Still, they are here accompanied with discussions of, and references to, works which appeared over the last three years. Moreover, several completely new sections are added to show how recent developments in financial engineering and economics can benefit from being v…
Econophysics has developed as a research field that applies the formalism of Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics to address Economics and Finance problems. The branch of Econophysics that applies of Quantum Theory to Economics and Finance is called Quantum Econophysics. In Finance, Quantum Econophysics' contributions have ranged from option pricing to market dynamics modeling, behavioral finance and applications of Game Theory, integrating the empirical finding, from human decision analysis, that shows that nonlinear update rules in probabilities, leading to non-additive decision weigh…
We describe the innovations in finances, introduced over the recent decades, and analyze most of the business and regulatory challenges, faced by the financial industry, because of the present disruptive changes in the global capital markets. We use the integrative thinking approach to formulate the new central bank strategy and propose that the new strategy has to be focused on the constant management of the monetary and financial instabilities, using the knowledge base in the field of econophysics. We propose the new theoretical model of economics, which is called the Nonlinear Dynamic Stoch…
The applications of techniques from statistical (and classical) mechanics to model interesting problems in economics and finance has produced valuable results. The principal movement which has steered this research direction is known under the name of `econophysics'. In this paper, we illustrate and advance some of the findings that have been obtained by applying the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics to model human decision making under `uncertainty' in behavioral economics and finance. Starting from Ellsberg's seminal article, decision making situations have been experimentally veri…
In line with the recent research and debates about econophysics and financial economics, this article discusses on usual misunderstandings between the two disciplines in terms of modelling and basic hypotheses. In the literature devoted to econophysics, the methodology used by financial economists is frequently considered as a top-down approach (starting from a priori "first principles") while econophysicists rather present themselves as scholars working with a (empirical data prone) bottom-up approach. Although this dualist perspective is very common in the econophysics literature, this paper…
One 'problem' with the 21st century world, particularly the economic and business worlds, is the phenomenal and increasing number of interconnections between economic agents (consumers, firms, banks, markets, national economies). This implies that such agents are all interacting and consequently giving raise to enormous degrees of non-linearity, a.k.a. complexity. Complexity often brings with it unexpected phenomena, such as chaos and emerging behaviour, that can become challenges for the survival of economic agents and systems. Developing econophysics approaches are beginning to apply, to the…
