The uneven geographical distribution of economic activities is a huge challenge worldwide and also for the European Union. In Krugman’s New Economic Geography economic systems have a simple spatial structure. This book shows that more sophisticated models should visualise the EU as an evolving trade network with a specific topology and different aggregation levels. At the highest level, economic geography models give a bird eye’s view of spatial dynamics. At a medium level, institutions shape the economy and the structure of (financial and labour) markets. At the lowest level, individual decisions interact with the economic, social and institutional environment; the focus is on firms’ decision on location and innovation. Such multilevel models exhibit complex dynamic patterns – path dependence, cumulative causation, hysteresis – on a network structure; and specific analytic tools are necessary for studying strategic interaction, heterogeneity and nonlinearities.

This book presents mathematical models and numerical simulations of crowd dynamics. The core topic is the development of a new multiscale paradigm, which bridges the microscopic and macroscopic scales taking the most from each of them for capturing the relevant clues of complexity of crowds. The background idea is indeed that most of the complex trends exhibited by crowds are due to an intrinsic interplay between individual and collective behaviors. The modeling approach promoted in this book pursues actively this intuition and profits from it for designing general mathematical structures susceptible of application also in fields different from the inspiring original one. The book considers also the two most traditional points of view: the microscopic one, in which pedestrians are tracked individually and the macroscopic one, in which pedestrians are assimilated to a continuum. Selected existing models are critically analyzed. The work is addressed to researchers and graduate students.

In this book methods from Operations Research and Game Theory are used to determine companies' profit-maximizing strategies related to pricing and (cooperative) advertising. It considers different supply chain structures as well as various distributions of power, making it possible to analyze both inter-echelon and intra-echelon dependencies between the companies' decisions. Additionally, an approach based on fuzzy set theory is presented in order to compensate for incomplete or missing data on market characteristics. Vertical cooperative advertising is an essential element of partnerships between manufacturers and retailers, allowing manufacturers to financially support their retailers' advertising efforts so as to increase sales for the entire supply chain. Given that such programs not only make up a considerable part of many companies' advertising budgets, but are also a controversial subject in many business relations, their correct design is of particular importance.

This volume consists of chapters written by eminent scientists and engineers from the international community and present significant advances in several theories, methods and applications of an interdisciplinary research. These contributions focus on both old and recent developments of Global Optimization Theory, Convex Analysis, Calculus of Variations, Discrete Mathematics and Geometry, as well as several applications to a large variety of concrete problems, including applications of computers to the study of smoothness and analyticity of functions, applications to epidemiological diffusion, networks, mathematical models of elastic and piezoelectric fields, optimal algorithms, stability of neutral type vector functional differential equations, sampling and rational interpolation for non-band-limited signals, recurrent neural network for convex optimization problems and experimental design. The book also contains some review works, which could prove particularly useful for a broader audience of readers in Mathematical and Engineering subjects and especially to graduate students who search for the latest information.

This book explores the view that normative behaviour is part of a complex of social mechanisms, processes and narratives that are constantly shifting. From this perspective, norms are not a kind of self-contained social object or fact, but rather an interplay of many things that we label as norms when we ‘take a snapshot’ of them at a particular instant. Further, this book pursues the hypothesis that considering the dynamic aspects of these phenomena sheds new light on them. The sort of issues that this perspective opens to exploration include: Of what is this complex we call a "social norm" composed of? How do new social norms emerge and what kind of circumstances might facilitate such an appearance? How context-specific are the norms and patterns of normative behaviour that arise? How do the cognitive and the social aspects of norms interact over time? How do expectations, beliefs and individual rationality interact with social norm complexes to effect behaviour? How does our social embeddedness relate to social constraint upon behaviour? How might the socio-cognitive complexes that we call norms be usefully researched?

In recent years, auctions have become an important field and many markets have designed new and sophisticated auction models to assign different types of items. The prime goal of this book is to set an organized classification of the main auction mechanisms in a way that readers can understand the importance of auction design and the advantages and drawbacks of each model. Given the relevance of the subject, there is a great volume of research about this topic. Nevertheless, most of these contributions use complex mathematical language difficult to understand for the average reader. In this book, the authors summarize the main ideas of the auction theory and explain them with simple language and plenty of examples. This book is a good starting point for any researcher interested in embracing the auction design as it also includes numerous real-world examples to engage the reader in the topic. “This book fills an important gap by making the main ideas and findings of auction research accessible.� Professor Paul Milgrom, Department of Economics, Stanford University.

This collection of essays honouring Dan Felsenthal and Moshe Machover reconsiders foundational aspects of the measurement of voting power. The specific case of voting power in two-tier systems - for instance the US system and the EU system - is analysed. Furthermore major power indices - Penrose, Banzhaf, Shapley-Shubik and others are revisited. The book proposes new voting procedures and studies well-known procedures and/or apportionment methods either from a technical or historical point of view.

Networks and Network Analysis for Defence and Security discusses relevant theoretical frameworks and applications of network analysis in support of the defence and security domains. This book details real world applications of network analysis to support defence and security. Shocks to regional, national and global systems stemming from natural hazards, acts of armed violence, terrorism and serious and organized crime have significant defence and security implications. Today, nations face an uncertain and complex security landscape in which threats impact/target the physical, social, economic and cyber domains. Threats to national security, such as that against critical infrastructures not only stem from man-made acts but also from natural hazards. Katrina (2005), Fukushima (2011) and Hurricane Sandy (2012) are examples highlighting the vulnerability of critical infrastructures to natural hazards and the crippling effect they have on the social and economic well-being of a community and a nation. With this dynamic and complex threat landscape, network analysis has emerged as a key enabler in supporting defence and security. With the advent of ‘big data’ and increasing processing power, network analysis can reveal insights with regards to structural and dynamic properties thereby facilitating greater understanding of complex networks, their entities, interdependencies, vulnerabilities to produce insights for creative solutions. This book will be well positioned to inform defence, security and intelligence professionals and researchers with regards to leading methodologies and approaches.

This present book provides an alternative approach to study the pre-kernel solution of transferable utility games based on a generalized conjugation theory from convex analysis. Although the pre-kernel solution possesses an appealing axiomatic foundation that lets one consider this solution concept as a standard of fairness, the pre-kernel and its related solutions are regarded as obscure and too technically complex to be treated as a real alternative to the Shapley value. Comprehensible and efficient computability is widely regarded as a desirable feature to qualify a solution concept apart from its axiomatic foundation as a standard of fairness. We review and then improve an approach to compute the pre-kernel of a cooperative game by the indirect function. The indirect function is known as the Fenchel-Moreau conjugation of the characteristic function. Extending the approach with the indirect function, we are able to characterize the pre-kernel of the grand coalition simply by the solution sets of a family of quadratic objective functions.

Two prisoners are told that they will be brought to a room and seated so that each can see the other. Hats will be placed on their heads; each hat is either red or green. The two prisoners must simultaneously submit a guess of their own hat color, and they both go free if at least one of them guesses correctly. While no communication is allowed once the hats have been placed, they will, however, be allowed to have a strategy session before being brought to the room. Is there a strategy ensuring their release? The answer turns out to be yes, and this is the simplest non-trivial example of a "hat problem." This book deals with the question of how successfully one can predict the value of an arbitrary function at one or more points of its domain based on some knowledge of its values at other points. Topics range from hat problems that are accessible to everyone willing to think hard, to some advanced topics in set theory and infinitary combinatorics. For example, there is a method of predicting the value f(a) of a function f mapping the reals to the reals, based only on knowledge of f's values on the open interval (a - 1, a), and for every such function the prediction is incorrect only on a countable set that is nowhere dense. The monograph progresses from topics requiring fewer prerequisites to those requiring more, with most of the text being accessible to any graduate student in mathematics. The broad range of readership includes researchers, postdocs, and graduate students in the fields of set theory, mathematical logic, and combinatorics. The hope is that this book will bring together mathematicians from different areas to think about set theory via a very broad array of coordinated inference problems.

Networks of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders is a mathematically rigorous and data rich book on a fascinating area of the science and engineering of social webs. There are hundreds of complex network phenomena whose statistical properties are described by inverse power laws. The phenomena of interest are not arcane events that we encounter only fleetingly, but are events that dominate our lives. We examine how this intermittent statistical behavior intertwines itself with what appears to be the organized activity of social groups. The book is structured as answers to a sequence of questions such as: How are decisions reached in elections and boardrooms? How is the stability of a society undermined by zealots and committed minorities and how is that stability re-established? Can we learn to answer such questions about human behavior by studying the way flocks of birds retain their formation when eluding a predator? These questions and others are answered using a generic model of a complex dynamic network-one whose global behavior is determined by a symmetric interaction among individuals based on social imitation. The complexity of the network is manifest in time series resulting from self-organized critical dynamics that have divergent first and second moments, are non-stationary, non-ergodic and non-Poisson. How phase transitions in the network dynamics influence such activity as decision making is a fascinating story and provides a context for introducing many of the mathematical ideas necessary for understanding complex networks in general. The decision making model (DMM) is selected to emphasize that there are features of complex webs that supersede specific mechanisms and need to be understood from a general perspective. This insightful overview of recent tools and their uses may serve as an introduction and curriculum guide in related courses.

Economists can use computer algebra systems to manipulate symbolic models, derive numerical computations, and analyze empirical relationships among variables. Maxima is an open-source multi-platform computer algebra system that rivals proprietary software. Maxima's symbolic and computational capabilities enable economists and financial analysts to develop a deeper understanding of models by allowing them to explore the implications of differences in parameter values, providing numerical solutions to problems that would be otherwise intractable, and by providing graphical representations that can guide analysis. This book provides a step-by-step tutorial for using this program to examine the economic relationships that form the core of microeconomics in a way that complements traditional modeling techniques. Readers learn how to phrase the relevant analysis and how symbolic expressions, numerical computations, and graphical representations can be used to learn from microeconomic models. In particular, comparative statics analysis is facilitated. Little has been published on Maxima and its applications in economics and finance, and this volume will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate-level students studying microeconomics, academic researchers in economics and finance, economists, and financial analysts.

This contributed volume focuses on aspects of dynamic game theory including differential games, evolutionary games, and stochastic games. It covers theoretical developments, algorithmic methods, and applications to fields as varied as mathematical biology, environmental management, economics, engineering, guidance and control, and social interaction. It will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience of researchers, practitioners, and advanced graduate students. Advances in Dynamic Games presents state-of-the-art research that serves as a testament to the vitality and growth of the field of dynamic games and their applications. Its contributions, written by experts in their respective disciplines, are outgrowths of presentations originally given at the 15th International Symposium of Dynamic Games and Applications held July 19-22, 2012, in Bysice, Czech Republic.

This volume explores the emerging and current, cutting-edge theories and methods of modeling, optimization, dynamics and bio economy. It provides an overview of the main issues, results and open questions in these fields as well as covers applications to biology, economy, energy, industry, physics, psychology and finance. The majority of the contributed papers for this volume come from the participants of the International Conference on Modeling, Optimization and Dynamics (ICMOD 2010), a satellite conference of EURO XXIV Lisbon 2010, which took place at Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto, Portugal and from the Berkeley Bio economy Conference 2012, at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Aligning the latest practices, innovations and case studies with academic frameworks and theories, the broad area of multi-criteria and game theory applications in manufacturing and logistics is covered in comprehensive detail. Divided into two parts, part I is dedicated to 'multi-criteria applications' and includes chapters on logistics with a focus on vehicle routing problems, a multi-objective decision making approach to select the best storage policy and an exploratory study to predict the most important factors that can lead to successful mobile supply chain management adoption for manufacturing firms. Part II covers 'game theory applications' and encompasses the process of forming a coalition within a corporate network to the problem of integrating inventory and distribution optimization together with game theory to effectively manage supply networks. Providing a forum to investigate, exchange novel ideas and disseminate knowledge covering the broad area of multi-criteria and game theory applications in manufacturing and logistics, Applications of Multi-Criteria and Game Theory Approaches is an excellent reference for students, researchers but also managers and industry professionals working with manufacturing and logistics issues.

Heinrich von Stackelberg's book, "Grundlagen einer reinen Kostentheorie", published in 1932 was at the forefront of a growing conceptual revolution in the theory of the firm, a theory which appears more relevant than ever in today's economic climate. In this work, Stackelberg masterfully built a theoretical framework which he later developed in Market Structure and Equilibrium. Foundations of a Pure Cost Theory represents the first translation of the original German version into English. This substantial book offers readers a critical and technical understanding of the firm, how firms function and the environments in which they operate. Fundamental notions of cost production, market economy, optimum position and velocities of production are given prominence. Ultimately, this work, which remains largely unknown, can be seen as a milestone text in our understanding of the strategies adopted by firms as a whole. The book has been meticulously translated from the German into English, retaining the author's examples in their historical context and capturing the spirit of the time with all its subtlety and significance.

Experimental Econophysics describes the method of controlled human experiments, which is developed by physicists to study some problems in economics or finance, namely, stylized facts, fluctuation phenomena, herd behavior, contrarian behavior, hedge behavior, cooperation, business cycles, partial information, risk management, and stock prediction. Experimental econophysics together with empirical econophysics are two branches of the field of econophysics. The latter one has been extensively discussed in the existing books, while the former one has been seldom touched. In this book, the author will focus on the branch of experimental econophysics. Empirical econophysics is based on the analysis of data in real markets by using some statistical tools borrowed from traditional statistical physics. Differently, inspired by the role of controlled experiments and system modelling (for computer simulations and/or analytical theory) in developing modern physics, experimental econophysics specially relies on controlled human experiments in the laboratory (producing data for analysis) together with agent-based modelling (for computer simulations and/or analytical theory), with an aim at revealing the general cause-effect relationship between specific parameters and emergent properties of real economic/financial markets. This book covers the basic concepts, experimental methods, modelling approaches, and latest progress in the field of experimental econophysics.

Set-valued optimization is a vibrant and expanding branch of mathematics that deals with optimization problems where the objective map and/or the constraints maps are set-valued maps acting between certain spaces. Since set-valued maps subsumes single valued maps, set-valued optimization provides an important extension and unification of the scalar as well as the vector optimization problems. Therefore this relatively new discipline has justifiably attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. This book presents, in a unified framework, basic properties on ordering relations, solution concepts for set-valued optimization problems, a detailed description of convex set-valued maps, most recent developments in separation theorems, scalarization techniques, variational principles, tangent cones of first and higher order, sub-differential of set-valued maps, generalized derivatives of set-valued maps, sensitivity analysis, optimality conditions, duality and applications in economics among other things.

The contributions in this volume have been written by eminent scientists from the international mathematical community and present significant advances in several theories, methods and problems of Mathematical Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Geometry and their Applications. The chapters focus on both old and recent developments in Functional Analysis, Harmonic Analysis, Complex Analysis, Operator Theory, Combinatorics, Functional Equations, Differential Equations as well as a variety of Applications. The book also contains some review works, which could prove particularly useful for a broader audience of readers in Mathematical Sciences, and especially to graduate students looking for the latest information.

The book focuses on Social Collective Intelligence, a term used to denote a class of socio-technical systems that combine, in a coordinated way, the strengths of humans, machines and collectives in terms of competences, knowledge and problem solving capabilities with the communication, computing and storage capabilities of advanced ICT. Social Collective Intelligence opens a number of challenges for researchers in both computer science and social sciences; at the same time it provides an innovative approach to solve challenges in diverse application domains, ranging from health to education and organization of work. The book will provide a cohesive and holistic treatment of Social Collective Intelligence, including challenges emerging in various disciplines (computer science, sociology, ethics) and opportunities for innovating in various application areas. By going through the book the reader will gauge insight and knowledge into the challenges and opportunities provided by this new, exciting, field of investigation. Benefits for scientists will be in terms of accessing a comprehensive treatment of the open research challenges in a multidisciplinary perspective. Benefits for practitioners and applied researchers will be in terms of access to novel approaches to tackle relevant problems in their field. Benefits for policy-makers and public bodies representatives will be in terms of understanding how technological advances can support them in supporting the progress of society and economy.

Using network models to investigate the interconnectivity in modern economic systems allows researchers to better understand and explain some economic phenomena. This volume presents contributions by known experts and active researchers in economic and financial network modeling. Readers are provided with an understanding of the latest advances in network analysis as applied to economics, finance, corporate governance, and investments. Moreover, recent advances in market network analysis that focus on influential techniques for market graph analysis are also examined. Young researchers will find this volume particularly useful in facilitating their introduction to this new and fascinating field. Professionals in economics, financial management, various technologies, and network analysis, will find the network models presented in this book beneficial in analyzing the interconnectivity in modern economic systems.

This collection of papers investigates the most recent debates about individualism and holism in the philosophy of social science. The debates revolve mainly around two issues: firstly, whether social phenomena exist sui generis and how they relate to individuals. This is the focus of discussions between ontological individualists and ontological holists. Secondly, to what extent social scientific explanations may and should, focus on individuals and social phenomena respectively. This issue is debated amongst methodological holists and methodological individualists. In social science and philosophy, both issues have been intensively discussed and new versions of the dispute have appeared just as new arguments have been advanced. At present, the individualism/holism debate is extremely lively and this book reflects the major positions and perspectives within the debate. This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate. This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s.

Dynamic game theory serves the purpose of including strategic interaction in decision making and is therefore often applied to economic problems. This book presents the state-of-the-art and directions for future research in dynamic game theory related to economics. It was initiated by contributors to the 12th Viennese Workshop on Optimal Control, Dynamic Games and Nonlinear Dynamics and combines a selection of papers from the workshop with invited papers of high quality.

Quantal Response Equilibrium presents a stochastic theory of games that unites probabilistic choice models developed in psychology and statistics with the Nash equilibrium approach of classical game theory. Nash equilibrium assumes precise and perfect decision making in games, but human behavior is inherently stochastic and people realize that the behavior of others is not perfectly predictable. In contrast, QRE models choice behavior as probabilistic and extends classical game theory into a more realistic and useful framework with broad applications for economics, political science, management, and other social sciences. Quantal Response Equilibrium spans the range from basic theoretical foundations to examples of how the principles yield useful predictions and insights in strategic settings, including voting, bargaining, auctions, public goods provision, and more. The approach provides a natural framework for estimating the effects of behavioral factors like altruism, reciprocity, risk aversion, judgment fallacies, and impatience. New theoretical results push the frontiers of models that include heterogeneity, learning, and well-specified behavioral modifications of rational choice and rational expectations. The empirical relevance of the theory is enhanced by discussion of data from controlled laboratory experiments, along with a detailed users' guide for estimation techniques. Quantal Response Equilibrium makes pioneering game-theoretic methods and interdisciplinary applications available to a wide audience.

The series is designed to bring together those mathematicians who are seriously interested in getting new challenging stimuli from economic theories with those economists who are seeking effective mathematical tools for their research. A lot of economic problems can be formulated as constrained optimizations and equilibration of their solutions. Various mathematical theories have been supplying economists with indispensable machineries for these problems arising in economic theory. Conversely, mathematicians have been stimulated by various mathematical difficulties raised by economic theories.