Evolutionary and agent-based computational finance: The new paradigms for asset pricing

A. Pastushkov
Additional contact information
A. Pastushkov: International Laboratory for Experimental and Behavioural Economics, HSE University, Moscow, Russia

Journal of the New Economic Association, 2025, vol. 66, issue 1, 196-222

Abstract: Since the 1980s asset pricing in the traditional neoclassical paradigm has been confronting empirical evidence contradicting both the predictions of the models as well as their microfoundations. Simultaneously, the market microstructure literature started probing the details of the trading process, turning the spotlight onto the effects of asymmetric information, clearing mechanisms and agents' learning and belief formation. These details, which were "abstracted away" in the earlier models, are becoming ever more important as the complexity of markets grows due to proliferation of algorithmic and high frequency trading and markets turn into ecologies of strategic, but not necessarily perfectly rational, co-evolving agents. In this review article I argue that the paradigms of agent-based and evolutionary finance are ideally suited to handle the modelling of markets as these complex ecologies. I review the most prominent contributions of evolutionary and agent-based modelling to asset pricing, specifically, categorizing them into three main streams: the research on the effects of institutional details of the markets, the research on the effects of agent heterogeneity, and the research of market selection. Furthermore, I argue that further progress can be made by combining the evolutionary and agent-based paradigms and highlight research questions for which such a mixed-method approach is likely to be the most fruitful.

Keywords: evolutionary finance; agent-based computational finance; asset pricing; simulations; market selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 C63 C73 G10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econorus.org/repec/journl/2025-66-196-222r.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nea:journl:y:2025:i:66:p:196-222

DOI: 10.31737/22212264_2025_1_196-222

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the New Economic Association is currently edited by Victor Polterovich and Aleksandr Rubinshtein

More articles in Journal of the New Economic Association from New Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alexey Tcharykov ().