Johannes Kaiser

The Tobin Tax - A Game-Theoretical and an Experimental Approach

In the nineteenseventies, James Tobin suggested the introduction of a transaction tax on the currency market to cope with exchange rate volatility. We investigate the consequences of the introduction of such a tax on an asset market model from a game-theoretic and an experimental point of view. Our main results include in respect to our model that contrary to the situation in game-theoretic equilibrium, the Tobin tax i) reduces trade volume, ii) reduces volatility, iii) increases market efficiency, and iv) decreases earnings inequality.

Behavioral Finance Meets Experimental Macroeconomics: On the Determinants of Currency Trade Decisions

A novel approach which conjoins elements of experimental macroeconomics and behavioral finance allows us to study the components of industrial firms currency trade decisions in the controlled environment of a laboratory. We analyze how firms operate in the currency market in a deterministic two-country model with two currencies. Consistent with presumptions of real-world behavior, subjects in our experiment tend to base their trade decisions on definite rather than on uncertain key data: Interest rates have a high impact, while technical analysis plays a minor role. We finally demonstrate how a simple decision rule that incorporates our findings might outperform the actually observed trade decisions.

Simulating complex social behaviour with the genetic action tree kernel

AbstractnThe concept of genetic action trees combines action trees with genetic algorithms. In this paper, we create a multi-agent simulation on the base of this concept and provide the interested reader with a software package to apply genetic action trees in a multi-agent simulation to simulate complex social behaviour. An example model is introduced to conduct a feasibility study with the described method. We find that our library can be used to simulate the behaviour of agents in a complex setting and observe a convergence to a global optimum in spite of the absence of stable states.n

Effects of Advanced Traveller Information Systems on Agents' Behaviour in a Traffic Scenario

A genetic algorithm approach is used to study the behaviour of agents in a simulation of a daily route choice. There are two roads to choose and we show that there is a welfare enhancing effect of an Advanced Traveller Information System (ATIS) in comparison to the standard case without an ATIS. In the first case it is remarkable that not all agents follow the recommendation of the ATIS and the equilibrium distribution is only approximately attained.