Mauro Gallegati Bücher

This volume contains a selection of contributions presented at the WEHIA02 (Workshop on Economies with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents), which was held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Physics of Trieste, Italy, on May 29- 31, under the auspices of Exystence, Complex System network of excellence . WEHIA02 is the 7th edition of a workshop, which was held for the first time at the University of Ancona, Italy , on 1996 (1), as a one-week series of seminars for the Italian PhD program . Ancona hosted the event in the years 1997 and 1998 (2) , before it moved to Genoa 1999 (3), Marseille 2000 (4) , Maastricht 2001 (5), and finally to Trieste 2002. The 2003 workshop was held in Kid , Germany, while the next editions will be in Kyoto, Japan (2004) and Essex, UK (2005). The full list of participants, titles of the invited lectures, papers and posters of WEHIA can be found in http ://econ . dea. it/wehia2. The workshop has been always very informal aiming to put together sch- ars of different disciplines working on interaction of heterogeneous „so- thing “ (economists, physicists, biologists) . To facilitate participation there has not been conference fee . It aimed to be a locus for communicate and exchange results and experiences . Several collaborations started with the Workshop and it is not without pride that the organizers claim such a result. The WEHIA has had two pars: a pars desiruens and a pars adestruens.

This book offers a thorough introduction to the highly promising complex agent-based approach to economics, in which agent-based models (ABMs) are used to represent economic systems as complex and evolving systems composed of heterogeneous agents of limited rationality who interact with each other, generating the system's emergent properties in the process. This approach represents a response to the limitations of the dominant theory in economics, which does not consider the possibility of a major crisis, and to the inability of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium theory to generate empirically falsifiable propositions. In the new perspective, the focus is on identifying the elements of instability rather than the triggering event. As the theory of complexity demonstrates, the interactions of heterogeneous agents produce non-linearity: this puts an end to the age of certainties. With ABMs, the methodology is "from the bottom up". The individual parameters and their distribution are estimated, and then evaluated to verify whether aggregate regularities emerge on the whole. In short, not only micro, but also meso and macro empirical validation are employed. Moreover, it shows that the mantra of growth should be supplanted by the concept of a growth . Given its depth of coverage, the book will enable students at the undergraduate and Master's level to gain a firm grasp of this important emerging approach. "This book is flower blossomed by one of the two greatest Italian economists." Bruce Greenwald, Columbia University "The author's - the ABM prophet's - thoughts on economics have been at the forefront of the world. Without a firm belief in and dedication to human society, it is impossible to write such a book. This is a work of high academic value, which can help readers quickly understand the history and current situation of complex economic theory. In particular, we can understand the basic viewpoints, academic status, advantages and shortcomings of various schools of economic theory." Jie Wu, Guangzhou Milestone Software Co., China.-- Provided by publisher

This book presents a systematic overview of cutting-edge research in the field of parametric modeling of personal income and wealth distribution, which allows one to represent how income/wealth is distributed within a given population. The estimated parameters may be used to gain insights into the causes of the evolution of income/wealth distribution over time, or to interpret the differences between distributions across countries. Moreover, once a given parametric model has been fitted to a data set, one can straightforwardly compute inequality and poverty measures. Finally, estimated parameters may be used in empirical modeling of the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the evolution of personal income/wealth distribution. In reviewing the state of the art in the field, the authors provide a thorough discussion of parametric models belonging to the “κ-generalized” family, a new and fruitful set of statistical models for the size distribution of income and wealth that they have developed over several years of collaborative and multidisciplinary research. This book will be of interest to all who share the belief that problems of income and wealth distribution merit detailed conceptual and methodological attention.