Research Projects Supported by HKU's High Performance Computing Facilities
 
Researcher:
Dr Hoi-fung Chau, Department of Physics
 
Project Title:
Numerical Study of Econophysical Systems
 
Project Description:
To study the dynamics and cooperative behavior in a simple-minded model of economy with heterogeneous inductive reasoning agents using statistical physics methods.
 
Project Duration:
24 months
 
Project Significance:
To have a better understanding of the dynamics and the origin of cooperative behavior in agent-based economics models using techniques already developed in statistical physics. Such an understanding may provide new views on the dynamics in the local stock market.
 
Results Achieved:
Currently, we are working on a paper concerning the inequality of wealth in a simple-minded economic model by studying the Gini index of the agents in this model. We are trying to explain the numerical Gini index obtained by semi-analytical methods such as the replica trick used in statistical mechanics.
 
Remarks on the Use of High Performance Computing Cluster:
In part of the project, we need to compute numerically the Gini index of a population averaged over time and various initial conditions. Unfortunately, the time to reach statistical equilibrium is just too long for a single workstation. This translates to about 200 days of computing time in a Digital Workstation in our department. The HPC Cluster, in contrast, offers great speedup in our computation. The real elapsed time is essentially increased by about 100 times. In fact, we get our preliminary results in just 2 days.
 
Email Address:
hfchau@hkusua.hku.hk
 

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