This article presents an agent-based model (ABM) of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialize in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical model because it reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In their...

Since the second half of the past century, increasingly flexible organizational forms are appearing among firms. However, while hierarchies are easily described, too few mathematical tools are available for flexible organizations. In this article, two Lyapunov functions are proposed in order to...

Without denying the importance of asymmetric information, this article purports the view that credit rationing may also originate from a lender's inability to classify loan applicants in proper risk categories. This effect is particularly strong when novel technologies are involved. Furthermore,...

This paper provides a general overview of theories and tools to model individual and collective decision-making. In particular, stress is laid on the interaction of several decision-makers. A substantial part of this paper is devoted to utility maximization and its application to collective...

We reconstruct Cohen, March and Olsen's Garbage Can model of organizational choice as an agent-based model. In the original model, the members of an organization can postpone decision-making. We add another means for avoiding making decisions, that of buck-passing difficult problems to...

Vacancy chains can be tracked in any context where a the availability of a desirable resource triggers a cascade of occupations through which the scarce resource flows through different owners. However, under certain conditions vacancy chains, rather than markets or other forms of competition,...

Learning curves can arise out of routing problems, or out of sequencing problems, or a combination of both. In this paper, learning curves arising out of routing problems are investigated by means of numerical simulations, whereas some properties of the learning curves arising out of sequencing...

This article presents an agent-based model of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialize in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical and methodological model that reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In...

In this paper explore the relationships between rivalry and geographical proximity at the very level of contacts between individual firms. In particular, we wish to highlight the influence of geographical proximity on rival identification, on the comparison of their knowledge, and on the...