Research Areas

Complex Economic Systems

Researchers in the group

João Ferreira do Amaral (PI)
João Carlos Lopes
João Dias
Francisco Louçã
Tanya Araújo
Manuel M. Godinho
Susana Santos
Sandro Mendonça
Rui Vilela Mendes
Ana Sofia Terlica
Sven Banisch
Tiago Mata

Objectives:

This group contained 5 active research lines. In what follows, we list their main aims for 2011in turn.
‘Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth’
1. To analyse the role played by the factor intensity-condition in a dynamic general equilibrium with banks.
2. To incorporate consumer durables in a dynamic general equilibrium analysis of the business cycle.

‘Innovation Systems’
1. To perform an economic analysis of IPR.
2. To analyze innovation systems.
3. To analyze industry dynamics, with emphasis on the survival and growth of new technology-based firms.
4. To perform an historical analysis of the innovation structure behind the British leadership in building large steamships, 1813-1913.
5. To explore forward analysis approaches as mechanisms for stakeholder coordination in the governance of innovation.

‘Mathematical and Quantitative Methods’
1. (On ISEG’s artificial market) To develop an artificial market, which we will compare with existing theoretical models and validate by comparing with the extensive amount of data we have available at UECE-ISEG from DataStream (Thomson Reuters).
2. Basing on previous experience, to incorporate in the artificial market the interaction of adaptive agent strategies with the actual mechanisms of price setting in real markets (the limit order book); and to characterize how non-rational behavior of human groups and individuals may be incorporated in market models to obtain a better understanding of current market events.
3. (On opinion dynamics) To characterize the interplay of opinion dynamics and the emergence of clusters of divergent opinions.

‘Measuring and Modelling the Activity of the Society’
1. To continue the study of the SAM (Social Accounting Matrix)-based approach and its use in defining a suitable framework for explaining the reality of countries and supporting the policy decision process.

‘Multisectoral Approaches to Growth and Complexity’
1 To develop economic and ecological measures of complexity, using multisectoral tools and models.
2 To analyze the effects of demand and supply shocks on the economy, using a new concept of multipliers (Euclidean distance multiplier).
3 To study productivity and wages.
4 To explore economic integration and multinational investment.

‘Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology’
1. To investigate the confrontation between Ronald A. Fisher and the alternative statistical approach by Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson, and the impact of the polemics in economics.
2. To discuss the historical parallel between the introduction of modern concepts of probability in economics and the generation of simulations and game theory, namely through the work of John von Neumann.
3. To assess the contribution of Robert Solow to the economic analysis of cycles and dynamics.
4. To discuss the early contributions to the study of complexity in economics, namely in the early twentieth century.