Complex Social and Behavioral Systems : Game Theory and Agent-Based Models

This volume in the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, Second Edition, combines the main features of Game Theory, covering most of the fundamental theoretical aspects under the cooperative and non-cooperative approaches, with the procedures of Agent-Based Modeling for studying complex systems composed of a large number of interacting entities with many degrees of freedom. In Game Theory, the cooperative approach focuses on the possible outcomes of the decision-makers’ interaction by abstracting from the "rational" actions or decisions that may lead to these outcomes. The non-cooperative approach focuses on the actions that the decision-makers can take. As John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern argued in their path-breaking book of 1944 entitled Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, most economic questions should be analyzed as games. The models of game theory are abstract representations of a number of real-life situations and have applications to economics, political science, computer science, evolutionary biology, social psychology, and law among others. Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) is a relatively new computational modeling paradigm which aims to construct the computational counterpart of a conceptual model of the system under study on the basis of discrete entities (i.e., the agent) with some properties and behavioral rules, and then to simulate them in a computer to mimic the real phenomena. Given the relative immaturity of this modeling paradigm, and the broad spectrum of disciplines in which it is applied, a clear cut and widely accepted definition of high level concepts of agents, environment, interactions and so on, is still lacking. This volume explores the state-of-the-art in the development of a real ABM ontology to address the epistemological issues related to this emerging paradigm for modeling complex systems.  

Marilda Sotomayor graduated in Mathematics in 1967 from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), received her master’s degree in Mathematics in 1972 from the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), and completed her Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1981 from the Catholique University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC/RJ) and IMPA. She also obtained the Privat Dozen in 1999 from the University of São Paulo/SP (USP/SP). Before joining the University of São Paulo/SP in 1997, she taught at the Catholique University of Rio de Janeiro, University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Sotomayor has worked as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at Brown University (USA), Visiting Researcher at the University of Pittsburgh (USA), Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (France), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain), Ecole Polytechnique (France), and University of California, Berkeley (USA). At present, she has retired from UFRJ and USP/SP and has a position at the Graduate School of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation-RJ. Her academic distinctions and prizes include the TWAS Prize, 2016, awarded by The World Academy of Sciences; her election for Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2003, for Fellow of the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation in 1993, for Fellow of the Game Theory Society in 2017, and for the Economic Theory Fellow in 2015 (awarded by the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory); the Lanchester Prize 1990 (Mathematical of Operation Research), Haralambos Simeonides Prize 2001(ANPEC), Mario Henrique Simonsen Prize 2006 (RBE/FGV), Adriano Romariz Duarte Prize 1996 (SBE); Medal of Honour 2013 (Order of the Economists of Brazil – OEB); Medal of Honour, awarded by the Department of Economics of USP-SP, Brazil: “in recognition of the academic work of Marilda Sotomayor, from 1997 to 2014”; and Medal of Honour, awarded by the Graduate School of Economics of Getulio VargasFoundation in honor of Marilda Sotomayor: “by her contribution to the Economic Sciences in the developing of the Matching Theory.” Dr. Sotomayor has contributed to the scientific community as Charter Member and Council Member of the Game Theory Society; Associate Editor of Econometrica and of the Brazilian Review of Econometrics; council member of the Econometric Society; guest Editor for the International Journal of Game Theory of the issue A collection of papers dedicated to David Gale on the occasion of his 85th birthday, published in 2008; Editor of the session of Game Theory of the Encyclopedia Complexity and Systems Sciences, published by Springer in 2009; and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Game Theory 2005–2018. She has also worked as Member of the Nominating Committee for Officers of the Econometric Society, Nominating Committee for Fellows of the Econometric Society, and as President of the Latin American Standing Committee of the Econometric Society.

Dr. Sotomayor’s work in the organization of conferences includes the scientific and local organization of three international workshops of the Game Theory Society, held at the University of São Paulo, in 2002, 2010, and 2014, respectively and the scientific organization of the 17th International Conference on Game Theory and Economic Applications and of the Gales Feast: A day in honor of the 85th birthday of David Gale, held at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, in 2006 and 2007, respectively.

She has also served as Member of the programme committee of several congresses (Latin American Meetings of the Econometric Society, World Congresses of the Econometric Society, the 3rd and 4th World Congress of the Game Theory Society).

Her research has been supported in part by grants from the CNPq. She has written the book Two-Sided Matching: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis with Alvin Roth, one of the winners of the Nobel Prize of Economics in 2012; three chapters of books; and over 50 peer-reviewed articles. The aforementioned book was awarded with the Lanchester Prize of 1990 and it was also honored with the celebration of the conference: Roth and Sotomayor: Twenty years after, held at Duke University, North Carolina, 2010, for celebrating the 20 years of publication of the book. Her area of interest is game theory, matching markets, and market design.

David Pérez-Castrillo earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, Paris. He had previously graduated in Mathematics from the University of the Bask Country in Bilbao. He is currently Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Research Professor at Barcelona GSE. He has been visiting professor in numerous universities, including Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Paris School of Economics, University of Copenhagen, and University ofCalifornia, San Diego.

He has been President of the Spanish Economic Association, President and General Secretary of the South-European Association of Economics, and Officer of the Executive Committee of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics.

He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Economics Letters, the Journal of Public Economic Theory, and the International Game Theory Review. He has also been managing editor of Investigaciones Económicas. His research on game theory and applied microeconomics has been published, among others, in American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Games and Economic Behavior, and International Economic Review. Because of his contributions, he has been awarded the Distinció per a la Promoció de la Recerca Universitària of the Generalitat de Catalunya for Young Researchers, ICREA Academia chairs, the Prize Haralambos Simeonidis, and the Arrow Price of the BE Journal.

Filippo Castiglione is Research Director at the Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo of the National Research Council of Italy and adjunct professor of Machine Learning at the Department of Mathematics and Physics of Roma Tre University. He graduated in Computer Science at the University of Milan, Italy, and got a Ph.D. in Scientific Computing at the University of Cologne, Germany. Dr. Castiglione has been postdoc at the Institute for Medical BioMathematics in Tel Aviv, Israel, and visiting research fellow at the IBM – T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights (NY); in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University; and in the Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston. Dr. Castiglione has published one book and about 100 reviewed research papers among journals, books, and conferences proceedings. He is the main author of the C-ImmSim agent-based simulation model of the immune system. He has received funding from the EU in the FP6, FP7, H2020, IMI, and JPI Framework Programmes. His research interests range from the study of complex systems to the modeling of biological systems, machine learning, and high-performance computing.