This paper begins to explore the determinants of the topological properties of the international - trade network (ITN). We fit bilateral-trade flows using a standard gravity equation to build a “residual” ITN where trade-link weights are depurated from geographical distance, size, border...

In this paper, I study epidemic diffusion in a generalized spatial SEIRD model, where individuals are initially connected in a social or geographical network. As the virus spreads in the network, the structure of interactions between people may endogenously change over time, due to quarantining...

In this paper we study a class of evolutionary models of industrial agglomeration with local positive feedbacks, which allow for a wide set of empirically-testable implications. Their roots rest in the Generalized Polya Urn framework. Here, however, we build on a birth-death process over a...

Schelling (1969, 1971a,b, 1978) considered a simple proximity model of segregation where individual agents only care about the types of people living in their own local geographical neighborhood, the spatial structure being represented by one- or two-dimensional lattices. In this paper, we argue...

This paper addresses the problem of finding the appropriate method for conducting empirical validation in agent-based (AB) models, which is often regarded as the Achilles’ heel of the AB approach to economic modelling. The paper has two objectives. First, to identify key issues facing AB...