This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

This is a preliminary draft of the manuscript of my textbook "Optimal Transport Methods in Economics" (to appear), based on lectures given at MIT in Spring 2015. The present preprint version is circulated to invite comments by readers

This paper proposes and studies an optimal placement problem in a limit order book. To gain some analytical insights, a simple correlated random walk model with mean-reversion is proposed for the best ask price. Optimal placement strategies for both single-period and multi-period cases are...

We introduce a new approach to model the market smile for inflation-linked derivatives by defining the Quadratic Gaussian Year-on-Year inflation model -- the QGY model. We directly define the model in terms of a year-on-year ratio of the inflation index on a discrete tenor structure, which,...

These notes review two simple heterogeneous agent models in economics and finance. The first is a cobweb model with rational versus naive agents introduced in Brock and Hommes (1997). The second is an asset pricing model with fundamentalists versus technical traders introduced in Brock and...

This paper surveys work on dynamic heterogeneous agent models (HAMs) in economics and finance. Emphasis is given to simple models that, at least to some extent, are tractable by analytic methods in combination with computational tools. Most of these models are behavioral models with boundedly...

On a phenomenological and a quantitative basis it is possible to proof the validity of the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics in the Economy. On the basis if the First Law important conclusions can be drawn for the course of daily economic problems. The basic State Function of the Second...