Leigh Tesfatsion

Leigh Tesfatsion is a computational economist who teaches at Iowa State University. She received her doctorate at the University of Minnesota, and taught at the University of Southern California before moving to Iowa State. She is known for promoting agent-based models as an alternative to rational expectations general equilibrium models for studying markets, finance, and macroeconomic phenomena. Her works are widely cited in the literature on the subject.^[1]

Primary Areas of Research

Transactive Energy Support for Integrated Transmission & Distribution System Operations
Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE)
Watershed Sustainability Through Community Engagement
The AMES Wholesale Power Market Test Bed
Flexible Least Squares (diagnostic tool for model specification)
Adaptive Computation Methods for Nonlinear Systems (tracking of solutions of parameterized nonlinear systems over parameter intervals; automation of higher-order partial derivative evaluation; adaptive homotopy with "smart" continuation parameters)
Trade Network Games (endogenous trade network formation through choice and refusal of trade game partners)
Optimality and Efficiency in Open-Ended Dynamic Economies (e.g., First Welfare Theorem for overlapping generations economies)
Learning via Criterion Filtering (direct updating of dynamic programming value functions)

Leigh Tesfatsion, 1997. "How Economists Can Get Alife," in W. B. Arthur, S. Durlauf, and D. Lane, eds., The Economy as an Evolving Complex System, II, pp. 533–564. Addison-Wesley. Pre-publication PDF.
_____, 2001. "Introduction to the Special Issue on Agent-based Computational Economics," Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control, 25(3-4), pp. 281-293.
_____, 2002. "Agent-Based Computational Economics: Growing Economies From the Bottom Up," Artificial Life, 8(1), pp. 55–82. Abstract and pre-publication PDF.
_____, 2003. "Agent-based Computational Economics: Modeling Economies as Complex Adaptive Systems," Information Sciences, 149(4), pp. 262-268.
_____, 2006. "Agent-Based Computational Economics: A Constructive Approach to Economic Theory," ch. 16, Handbook of Computational Economics, v. 2, pp. 831–880. Abstract/outline. 2005 prepublication PDF.
_____ and Kenneth L. Judd, eds., 2006. Handbook of Computational Economics, Volume 2, Agent-Based Computational Economics, Handbooks in Economics Series, Elsevier/North-Holland, Amsterdam. ISBN 0-444-51253-5. Description and chapter-preview links.