Using an agent-based model (ABM) with fundamentalists and chartists, prone to develop bubbles and crashes, we demonstrate the usefulness of direct market intervention by a policy maker, documenting strong performance in preventing bubbles and drawdowns and augmenting significantly the welfare of...

This short review presents a selected history of the mutual fertilization between physics and economics, from Isaac Newton and Adam Smith to the present. The fundamentally different perspectives embraced in theories developed in financial economics compared with physics are dissected with the...

Using virtual stock markets with artificial interacting software investors, aka agent-based models (ABMs), we present a method to reverse engineer real-world financial time series. We model financial markets as made of a large number of interacting boundedly rational agents. By optimizing the...

We introduce the concept of “negative bubbles” as the mirror image of standard financial bubbles, in which positive feedback mechanisms may lead to transient accelerating price falls. To model these negative bubbles, we adapt the Johansen-Ledoit-Sornette (JLS) model of rational expectation...

We propose an extension of the class of rational expectations bubbles (REBs) to the more general rational beliefs setting of Kurz (1994a,b). In a potentially non-stationary but stationarizable environment, it is possible to hold more than one (small-r) “rational” expectation. When rational...

We suggest that the propensity for altruistic punishment and reward is an emergent property that has co-evolved with cooperation and has provided efficient feedback measured in social dilemma and public good experiments. A simple cost/benefit analysis at the level of single agents, who...

Polytope Fraud Theory (PFT) extends the existing triangle and diamond theories of accounting fraud with ten abnormal financial practice alarms that a fraudulent firm might trigger. These warning signals are identified through evaluation of the shorting behavior of sophisticated activist short...

The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage...