Title: Heterogeneity, interaction and emergence: effects of composition

Authors: Simone Landini; Mauro Gallegati

Addresses: IRES Piemonte, Socioeconomic Research Institute of Piedmont, via Nizza 18, 10125, Turin, Italy ' DiSES, Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, piazzale Martelli 8, 60121, Ancona, Italy

Abstract: The present paper emphasises that socioeconomic systems are complex systems due to two entangled categories characterising their constituents: heterogeneity and interaction as the main sources of complexity and emergence. This perspective is developed by reasoning on the double-face problem of microfoundation and aggregation in macroeconomic modelling taking care of heterogeneity, interaction and composition effects of individual behaviours into the emergence of macroscopic phenomena. With reference to the literature of this field, based on the statistical physics perspective in conjunction with the agent based modelling, an approach is discussed to analyse complex systems dynamics by means of a restricted set of equations explaining the dynamics of the drifting path trajectory and the distribution of fluctuations.

Keywords: complexity; heterogeneity; interaction; emergence; composition effects; agent-based modelling; statistical physics; master equation; socioeconomic systems; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; MAS; microfoundation; aggregation; macroeconomic modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEE.2014.064787

International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, 2014 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.339 - 361

Received: 19 Feb 2014
Accepted: 30 Apr 2014
Published online: 14 Sep 2014 *

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