Drawing on a large database of publicly announced R&D alliances, we track the evolution of R&D networks in a large number of economic sectors over a long time period (1986-2009). Our main goal is to evaluate temporal and sectoral robustness of the main statistical properties of empirical R&D...

The authors develop an agent-based model to reproduce the size distribution of R&D alliances of firms. Agents are uniformly selected to initiate an alliance and to invite collaboration partners. These decide about acceptance based on an individual threshold that is compared with the utility...

A local culture denotes a set of rules on business behaviour among firms in a cluster. Similar to social norms or conventions, it is an emergent feature of interaction in an economic network. To model its emergence, we consider a distributed agent population, representing cluster firms. Further,...

We introduce a general framework for models of cascade and contagion processes on networks, to identify their commonalities and differences. In particular, models of social and financial cascades, as well as the fiber bundle model, the voter model, and models of epidemic spreading are recovered...

In this paper we focus on diversity-induced resonance, which was recently found in bistable, excitable and other physical systems. We study the appearance of this phenomenon in a purely economic model of cooperating and defecting agents. Agent's contribution to a public good is seen as a social...

Excessive leverage, i.e. the abuse of debt financing, is considered one of the primary factors in the default of financial institutions. Systemic risk results from correlations between individual default probabilities that cannot be considered independent. Based on the structural framework by...

How do humans respond to indirect social influence when making decisions? We analysed an experiment where subjects had to repeatedly guess the correct answer to factual questions, while having only aggregated information about the answers of others. While the response of humans to aggregated...

We demonstrate by mathematical analysis and systematic computer simulations that redistribution can lead to sustainable growth in a society. In accordance with economic models of risky human capital, we assume that dynamics of human capital is modeled as a multiplicative stochastic process...

We examine the emergent field of economic networks and explore its ability to shed light on the global and volatile economy where credit, ownership, innovation, investment, and virtually every other economic activity is carried at a scale and scope that respects no geographical, organizational,...

Excessive leverage, i.e. the abuse of debt financing, is considered one of the  primary factors in the default of financial institutions. Systemic risk results from correlations between individual default probabilities that cannot be considered independent. Based on the structural framework...