We study a prototypical model of a Parliament with two Parties or two Political Coalitions and we show how the introduction of a variable percentage of randomly selected independent legislators can increase the global efficiency of a Legislature, in terms of both the number of laws passed and...

The Peter principle has recently been investigated by means of an agent-based simulation, and its validity has been numerically corroborated. It has been confirmed that, within certain conditions, it can really influence in a negative way the efficiency of a pyramidal organization adopting...

In order to analyse the behaviour of pedestrians at the very fine scale, while moving along the streets, in open spaces or inside a building, simulation modelling becomes an essential tool. In these spatial environments, simulation requires the ability to model the local dynamics of individual...

In this paper, making use of recent statistical physics techniques and models, we address the specific role of randomness in financial markets, both at the micro and the macro level. In particular, we review some recent results obtained about the effectiveness of random strategies of investment,...

We study the relationship between chaotic behavior and the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) in the Kuramoto model. We calculate sums of angles at equidistant times along deterministic trajectories of single oscillators and we show that, when chaos is sufficiently strong, the Pdfs of the sums tend to...

In this paper we discuss opinion dynamics in the opinion changing rate (OCR) model, recently proposed in Pluchino et al. [Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 16(4) (2005) 515–531]. The OCR model allows to study whether and how a group of social agents, with a different intrinsic tendency (rate) to change...

We present a Monte Carlo numerical investigation of the Hamiltonian mean field (HMF) model. We begin by discussing canonical Metropolis Monte Carlo calculations, in order to check the caloric curve of the HMF model and study finite size effects. In the second part of the paper, we present...

We discuss the non-Boltzmannian nature of quasi-stationary states in the Hamiltonian mean field (HMF) model, a paradigmatic model for long-range interacting classical many-body systems. We present a theorem excluding the Boltzmann–Gibbs exponential weight in Gibbs Γ-space of microscopic...

The Brain Drain phenomenon is particularly heterogeneous and is characterized by peculiar specifications. It influences the economic fundamentals of both the country of origin and the host one in terms of human capital accumulation. Here, the brain drain is considered from a microeconomic...

Building on similarities between earthquakes and extreme financial events, we use a self-organized criticality-generating model to study herding and avalanche dynamics in financial markets. We consider a community of interacting investors, distributed on a small-world network, who bet on the...