Université de Fribourg

Statistical mechanics of competitive resource allocation using agent-based models

Chakraborti, Anirban ; Challet, Damien ; Chatterjee, Arnab ; Marsili, Matteo ; Zhang, Yi-Cheng ; Chakrabarti, Bikas K.

In: Physics Reports, 2015, vol. 552, p. 1–25

Demand outstrips available resources in most situations, which gives rise to competition, interaction and learning. In this article, we review a broad spectrum of multi-agent models of competition (El Farol Bar problem, Minority Game, Kolkata Paise Restaurant problem, Stable marriage problem, Parking space problem and others) and the methods used to understand them analytically. We emphasize the...

Université de Fribourg

Prediction accuracy and sloppiness of log-periodic functions

Brée, David S. ; Challet, Damien ; Peirano, Pier Paolo

In: Quantitative Finance, 2013, vol. 13, no. 2, p. 275-280

We show that log-periodic power-law (LPPL) functions are intrinsically very hard to fit to time series. This comes from their sloppiness, the squared residuals depending very much on some combinations of parameters and very little on other ones. The time of singularity that is supposed to give an estimate of the day of the crash belongs to the latter category. We discuss in detail why and how the...

Université de Fribourg

Emergence of heterogeneity in a noncompetitive resource allocation problem

Matzke, Christina ; Challet, Damien

In: Physical Review E statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 2011, vol. 84, no. 1, p. 016107

Tuning one’s shower in some hotels may turn into a challenging coordination game with imperfect information. The temperature sensitivity increases with the number of agents, making the problem possibly unlearnable. Because there is in practice a finite number of possible tap positions, identical agents are unlikely to reach even approximately their favorite water temperature. We show that a...

Université de Fribourg

Turnover, account value and diversification of real traders: evidence of collective portfolio optimizing behavior

Lachapelle, David Morton de ; Challet, Damien

In: New Journal of Physics, 2010, vol. 12, no. 7, p. 075039

Despite the availability of very detailed data on financial markets, agent-based modeling is hindered by the lack of information about real trader behavior. This makes it impossible to validate agent-based models, which are thus reverse-engineering attempts. This work is a contribution towards building a set of stylized facts about the traders themselves. Using the client database of Swissquote...

Université de Fribourg

Structure-preserving desynchronization of minority games

Mosetti, Giancarlo ; Challet, Damien ; Solomon, S.

In: The European Physical Journal B, 2009, vol. 71, no. 4, p. 573-577

Perfect synchronicity in N-player games is a useful theoretical dream, but communication delays are inevitable and may result in asynchronous interactions. Some systems such as financial markets are asynchronous by design, and yet most theoretical models assume perfectly synchronized actions. We propose a general method to transform standard models of adaptive agents into asynchronous systems...

Université de Fribourg

Emergence of product differentiation from consumer heterogeneity and asymmetric information

Lü, L. ; Medo, Matúš ; Zhang, Yi-Cheng ; Challet, Damien

In: The European Physical Journal B, 2008, vol. 64, no. 2, p. 293-300

We introduce a fully probabilistic framework of consumer product choice based on quality assessment. It allows us to capture many aspects of marketing such as partial information asymmetry, quality differentiation, and product placement in a supermarket.

Université de Fribourg

Feedback and efficiency in limit order markets

Challet, Damien

In: Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2008, vol. 387, no. 15, p. 3831-3836

A consistency criterion for price impact functions in limit order markets is proposed that prohibits chain arbitrage exploitation. Both the bid-ask spread and the feedback of sequential market orders of the same kind onto both sides of the order book are essential to ensure consistency at the smallest time scale. All the stocks investigated in Paris Stock Exchange have consistent price impact...

Université de Fribourg

Taking a shower in Youth Hostels: risks and delights of heterogeneity

Matzke, Christina ; Challet, Damien

Tuning one's shower in some hotels may turn into a challenging coordination game with imperfect information. The temperature sensitivity increases with the number of agents, making the problem possibly unlearnable. Because there is in practice a finite number of possible tap positions, identical agents are unlikely to reach even approximately their favorite water temperature. Heterogeneity allows...

Université de Fribourg

The therapy to shock therapy: optimal dynamical policies for transition economies

Challet, Damien ; Solomon, Sorin ; Yaari, Gur

We show that a simple model reproduces very closely the evolution of the GDP in constant dollars of many countries during the times of recession and recovery. A theoretical analysis illustrates how an optimal dynamical policy reduces both recession duration and severity, and increases the value of GDP at all times. We propose a criterion to distinguish a posteriori a dynamical policy from a...

Université de Fribourg

Fat tails, long memory, maturity and ageing in open-source software projects

Challet, Damien ; Valverde, Sergi

We report activity data analysis on several open source software projects, focusing on time between modifications and on the number of files modified at once. Both have fat-tailed distributions, long-term memory, and display systematic non-trivial cross-correlations, suggesting that quiet periods are followed by cascading modifications. In addition the maturity of a software project can be...