Search engine query data deliver insight into the behavior of individuals who are the smallest possible scale of our economic life. Individuals are submitting several hundred million search engine queries around the world each day. We study weekly search volume data for various search terms from...

It is well-known that financial asset returns exhibit fat-tailed distributions and long-term memory. These empirical features are the main objectives of modeling efforts using (i) stochastic processes to quantitatively reproduce these features and (ii) agent-based simulations to understand the...

For an intriguing variety of switching processes in nature, the underlying complex system abruptly changes from one state to another in a highly discontinuous fashion. Financial market fluctuations are characterized by many abrupt switchings creating upward trends and downward trends, on time...

We introduce a simple model for simulating financial markets, based on an order book, in which several agents trade one asset at a virtual exchange continuously. For a stationary market the structure of the model, the order flow rates of the different kinds of order types and the used price time...

Understanding correlations in complex systems is crucial in the face of turbulence, such as the ongoing financial crisis. However, in complex systems, such as financial systems, correlations are not constant but instead vary in time. Here we address the question of quantifying state-dependent...

We introduce a future orientation index to quantify the degree to which Internet users worldwide seek more information about years in the future than years in the past. We analyse Google logs and find a striking correlation between the country's GDP and the predisposition of its inhabitants to...

The dynamics of news are such that some days are dominated by a single story while others see news outlets reporting on a range of different events. While these large-scale features of news are familiar to many, they are often ignored in settings where they may be important in understanding...

When making a decision, humans consider two types of information: information they have acquired through their prior experience of the world, and further information they gather to support the decision in question. Here, we present evidence that data from search engines such as Google can help...

Technology is becoming deeply interwoven into the fabric of society. The Internet has become a central source of information for many people when making day-to-day decisions. Here, we present a method to mine the vast data Internet users create when searching for information online, to identify...

The complex behavior of financial markets emerges from decisions made by many traders. Here, we exploit a large corpus of daily print issues of the Financial Times from 2nd January 2007 until 31st December 2012 to quantify the relationship between decisions taken in financial markets and...