In this note, we construct two theoretical models that analyze the relationship between inequality of access and rates of innovation as well as correlative data that show a negative correlation between income inequality and levels of innovativeness. Our two models suggest that unequal access to...

This paper characterizes the optimal composition of a group for making a combined forecast. In the model, individual forecasters have types defined according to a statistical criterion we call <i>type coherence.</i> Members of the same type have identical expected accuracy, and forecasters within a...

This paper formally defines tipping points as discontinuities between current and future states of a system and introduces candidate measures of when a system tips based on changes in the probability distribution over future states. We make two categorical distinctions between types of tips...

The paper constructs two measures of difficulty for functions defined over binary strings. The first of these measures, cover size, captures the difficulty of solving a problem in parallel. The second measure, ascent size, captures the difficulty of solving a problem sequentially. We show how...

In this chapter, we assess recent contributions of computational models to the study of politics. We focus primarily on agent-based models developed by economists and political scientists. These models address collective action problems, questions related to institutional design and performance,...