Minority Games
The Minority Game is a physicist's attempt to explain market behaviour by the
interaction between traders. With a minimal set of ingredients and drastic assumptions,
this model reproduces market ecology among different types of traders. Its emphasis is on
speculative trading and information flow. The book first describes the philosophy lying
behind the conception of the Minority Game in 1997, and includes in particular a
discussion about the El Farol bar problem. It then reviews the main steps in later
developments, including both the theory and its applications to market phenomena. 'Minority
Games' gives a colourful and stylized, but also realistic picture of how
financial markets operate. "Much of the book is devoted to examining the
generalizations and extensions of the basic MG idea ... essential reading for those who
wish to gain a deep understanding of this idea." -- Dean Rickles, Studies in History
and Philosophy of Modern Physics"The book will be useful beyond economics, the
philosophy of economics, and the philosophy of physics since it deals in an elementary way
with issues of modelling. Therefore, I recommend it as much to philosophers of sciences
(looking for some novel case studies and examples) as to philosophers of physics." --
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics"Physicist Challet, and one of his
coauthors, Yi-Cheng Zhang, conceived of the Minority Game, a model problem explaining
market behavior by the interaction between traders, in 1997. Here, they describe the
philosophy behind the model, discuss the El Farol bar problem, and review the main steps
in later developments, including both the theory and its applications to market phenomena.
In addition to a primary readership of physicists, the book is written to be accessible to
economists and researchers and practitioners in financial markets." -- Reference
& Research Book News
1. Introduction ;
2. Early works ;
3. Understanding the Minority Game dynamics ;
4. Minority Games as market models ;
5. Quest for better cooperation ;
A. List of selected publications ;
B. Source code
360 pages, Paperback