The basic philosophy behind Gibrat's rule of proportionate effect has been to find some common mechanism in the growth process of business firms, based on the idea that growth rates are independent of size and drawn from the same distribution. After decades of research, however, it seems fair to...

We develop a simple agent-based financial market model in which heterogeneous speculators apply technical and fundamental analysis to trade in two different stock markets. Speculators' strategy/market selections are repeated at each time step and depend on predisposition effects, herding...

We develop a financial market model with interacting chartists and fundamentalists that embeds the famous bull and bear market model of Huang and Day as a special case. Their model is given by a one-dimensional continuous piecewise-linear map. Our model, on the other hand, is more flexible and...

We develop a simple two-region, cobweb-type dynamic equilibrium model to demonstrate the existence of optimal trade barriers. A pure comparative statics analysis of our model suggests that a reduction of trade barriers always enhances welfare. However, taking a dynamic perspective reveals that...

Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as...

With the help of two examples, we illustrate the usefulness of agent-based models as a tool for economic policy design. In our first example, we apply a financial market model in which the order flow of speculators, relying on technical and fundamental analysis, generates intricate price...

We analyze how well-being is related to working time preferences and hours mismatch. Selfreported measures of life satisfaction are used as an empirical approximation of true wellbeing. Our results indicate that well-being is generally lower among workers with working time mismatch. Particularly...

This article explores the influence of competitive conditions on the evolutionary fitness of different risk preferences. As a practical example, the professional competition between fund managers is considered. To explore how different settings of competition parameters, the exclusion rate and...

The paper proposes an elementary agent-based asset pricing model that, invoking the two trader types of fundamentalists and chartists, comprises four features: (i) price determination by excess demand; (ii) a herding mechanism that gives rise to a macroscopic adjustment equation for the market...

The unpredictability of returns counts as a stylized fact of financial markets. To reproduce this fact, modelers usually implement noise terms - a method with several downsides. Above all, systematic patterns are not eliminated but merely blurred. The present article introduces a model in which...