Modelling the English housing market with agents: markets from the bottom up
In this governor talk, Prof. Nigel Gilbert from the University of Surrey will discuss how the state of the housing market is of enormous importance both for the economy as a whole and to individuals and families. Consequently there have been repeated attempts at controlling, for example, house price inflation through fiscal policies, most of which have either failed or been only moderately successful. Nigel will suggest that the reason for this is that the dynamics of the market are not sufficiently well understood, and he will present an agent-based model of the market that simulates householders' renting, buying and selling and 'grows' the market from these activities. He will show that aggregate patterns that emerge mirror those in the real market and propose that the model can be used to appraise the efficacy of some policy option. Finally, he will reflect on the value of such 'bottom-up' modelling of economic activity for other policy domains.
Please note that this event is reserved to staff and Corporate Members.