Sebastian Poledna on “Economic forecasting with an agent-based model”

Sebastian Poledna on “Economic forecasting with an agent-based model”

Join us on June 23 at 2:15 pm at the Complextiy Science Hub Vienna for a talk by Sebastian Poledna (CSH External Faculty, IIASA) speaking how economic forecasting with agent-based models could save us from future economic shocks. No registration is needed – you will be picked up at the front door at 2:10 pm.
Abstract: We develop an agent-based model (ABM) for the Austrian economy using data from national accounts, input-output tables, government statistics, census data, and business surveys. The model incorporates all economic activities (producing and distributive transactions) as classified by the European system of accounts (ESA). All economic entities, i.e. all juridical and natural persons, are represented by agents (at a scale of 1:10). We show that this model is able to compete with vector autoregressive (VAR) and autoregressive–moving-average (ARMA) models in out-of-sample prediction. Potential applications of this ABM include economic forecasting, as well as the prediction of responses of the economy to endogenous shocks, e.g. from the financial system, or exogenous shocks like natural disasters, transformative technological innovations, or unintended consequences of political interventions such as subsidies and tax policies. Talk on June 27 at 4pm at the Hub.