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The Matthew effect describes the phenomenon that in societies the rich tend to get richer and the potent even more powerful. It is closely related to the concept of preferential attachment in network science, where the more connected nodes…
In economy, markets are denoted as efficient when it is impossible to systematically generate profits which outperform the average. In the past years, the concept has been tested in other domains such as the growing sports betting market.…
Persistent wealth inequality, where a small fraction of the population accumulates most resources while the majority remains economically vulnerable, is a widespread phenomenon. We investigate its underlying mechanisms using an agent-based…
Many cultural traits characterizing intelligent behaviors are now thought to be transmitted through statistical learning, motivating us to study its effects on cultural evolution. We conduct a large-scale music data analysis and observe…
Effective teamwork is essential in structured, performance-driven environments, from professional organizations to high-stakes competitive settings. As tasks grow more complex, achieving high performance requires not only technical…
The rich-get-richer mechanism (agents increase their ``wealth'' randomly at a rate proportional to their holdings) is often invoked to explain the Pareto power-law distribution observed in many physical situations, such as the degree…
This paper presents a semi-quantitative mathematical model of the changes over time in the statistical distribution of well-being of individuals in a society. The model predicts that when individuals overvalue the more socially conspicuous…
Machine learning relies on the assumption that unseen test instances of a classification problem follow the same distribution as observed training data. However, this principle can break down when machine learning is used to make important…
Randomness in scientific estimation is generally assumed to arise from unmeasured or uncontrolled factors. However, when combining subjective probability estimates, heterogeneity stemming from people's cognitive or information diversity is…
Casting machine learning as a type of search, we demonstrate that the proportion of problems that are favorable for a fixed algorithm is strictly bounded, such that no single algorithm can perform well over a large fraction of them. Our…
Imitation is a key component of human social behavior, and is widely used by both children and adults as a way to navigate uncertain or unfamiliar situations. But in an environment populated by multiple heterogeneous agents pursuing…
We investigate the level of success a firm achieves depending on which of two common scoring algorithms is used to screen qualified applicants belonging to a disadvantaged group. Both algorithms are trained on data generated by a prejudiced…
The major finding, of this article, is an ensemble method, but more exactly, a novel, better ranked voting system (and other variations of it), that aims to solve the problem of finding the best candidate to represent the voters. We have…
Autonomous AI agents capable of complex planning and action mark a shift beyond today's generative tools. As these systems enter political and economic life, who can access them, how capable they are, and how many can be deployed will shape…
Election results are determined by numerous social factors that affect the formation of opinion of the voters, including the network of interactions between them and the dynamics of opinion influence. In this work we study the result of…
Public sector agencies perform the critical task of implementing the redistributive role of the State by acting as the leading provider of critical public services that many rely on. In recent years, public agencies have been increasingly…
Does a high dispersal rate provide a competitive advantage when risking competitive exclusion? To this day, the theoretical literature cannot answer this question in full generality. The present paper focuses on the simplest mathematical…
We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and…
Zipf's power-law distribution is a generic empirical statistical regularity found in many complex systems. However, rather than universality with a single power-law exponent (equal to 1 for Zipf's law), there are many reported deviations…
When consequential decisions are informed by algorithmic input, individuals may feel compelled to alter their behavior in order to gain a system's approval. Models of agent responsiveness, termed "strategic manipulation," analyze the…