English

Ab initio simulation of market dynamics

Physics and Society 2026-05-25 v2

Abstract

We provide simple models for the utility function (or psychology) of an actor trading a multitude of goods for money. In this framework, money has no intrinsic consumption value, but is required as a medium of exchange. A collection of such actors are then simulated interacting through market rules which create a double auction for each of the goods. This framework captures the self-consistent, rational behavior of independent actors, including how they make compromises between purchases of different goods; so goes beyond price-demand curves, and also generates the small-scale fluctuations from individual trades. We find that stable price formation requires a model that includes time-preference for the actors. Fluctuations in prices show a distribution with algebraic tails. Including inflation expectations leads to complex, damped or un-damped price oscillations. We attempt to model the dynamics of input-output economic models, but find it difficult to keep prices stable with the assumptions employed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.18756,
  title  = {Ab initio simulation of market dynamics},
  author = {Robert S. Farr},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.18756},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages, 14 figures. Some mistakes in figure captions have been corrected compared to version 1; also additional references, clearer explanations and a new figure (figure 14) were added

R2 v1 2026-07-22T07:19:49.171Z