In March, together with the Prof Doyne Farmer’s Complexity Economics team at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford, we organized a workshop on the use of Agent-Based Modelling for Systemic Stress Testing. The workshop was the brainchild of Prof Farmer, a world-renowned expert in the field of Agent-Based Models and our supervisor, Co-Pierre Georg.
AIFMRM and UCT provided funding for three PhD students - myself, Esti Kemp and Tina Koziol - to attend the workshop together with Co-Pierre. In addition to the 2 day workshop, we also spent the entire week at INET, discussing opportunities for collaborative research with Prof Farmers Team.
 |
ABM workshop
The workshop, hosted on 9 and 10 March at INET in Oxford, saw a group of 40 experts from academia and policy present work on the use, and potential for agent-based modelling. We saw presentations from representatives of the ECB, the Bank of England and Norges Bank together with presentations from amongst others, the University of Oxford, the University of Leicester and ZEW Mannheim.
 |
We all learnt a great deal, and the conversations during lunch and over dinner were tremendously enlightening. It was particularly rewarding to see our work being presented and discussed in this setting and the workshop was a great affirmation that the work we are busy with contributes to a global movement towards developing new techniques and methods for regulators to better monitor the health of the financial system.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Impressions of Oxford
Oxford is a beautiful city; very much a university town. The university is very much integral to the city’s identity and everywhere you look you see grand historical buildings with even more elaborate stories and fables as to their significance. To best explain the magic of the city - many of the buildings and dining halls in Oxford were used as creative inspiration for the Harry Potter movies. As our stay was quite short, we were not able to do too much sightseeing, but spent a good day or two walking around the city. A particular highlight was visiting Christ Church college and also having dinner at Keble college. It was also great seeing and spending time with Pawel, a former postdoc at AIFMRM who also presented at the workshop and is now based at the ESRB.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Final impressions
All in all, this was a such a memorable week and one that I will not easily forget. We all learnt a tremendous amount and built important networks with other researchers for future collaborations. A direct outcome of this was the establishment of a formal collaboration between INET and AIFMRM which will see myself and Esti spend time at INET later this year, while Adrian Carro, a postdoctoral researcher at INET will also spend a few months with us at INET in early 2018.