Abstract:
In recent decades, a considerable stream of research, following the complexity approach (Rosser, 2004), has developed a series of models that import concepts and tools from hard sciences to economics. They represent an attempt to identify an alternative framework to the representative agent hypothesis and to its underlying simplified solution to the aggregation problem (Kirman, 1992). Theoretical research has moved in two main directions: first, the development of agent-based models, solved by means of computer simulations (Axtell et al., 1996; Axelrod, 1997); second, formulations of stochastic frameworks for the aggregation of micro-variables (Aoki, 1996, 2002; Aoki and Yoshikawa, 2006).
