Joshua Epstein

Behavioral Economist

BIG IDEAS

• The Social Science Revolution
  Social Science is undergoing a revolution. Nobel Prizes for behavioral economists and the best-selling success of The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Freakonomics demonstrate that, suddenly, economists are on to something about the way individual choices lead to group behavior. And the tools they are developing can help organizations make more informed decisions about markets and management.
  
  Over two decades, Josh Epstein’s work has used the rigor and power of modeling to link individual behavior to organizational performance—whether the organization is a business, a hospital, or the Anasazi Indians in the Southwest.
  
  Some of the subjects he discusses include:
  
  • Pandemic Flu: How should the NIH contain an outbreak of a virulent strain of flu? Epstein’s models of social network contagion help predict how the disease will spread and where to try to stop it.
  
  • Civil Conflict: How does a small skirmish erupt into a country-wide conflict? What are the preconditions for such volatility, and how can it be damped down?
  
  • New Product Introduction: How does a product become a runaway success? How can “word of mouth” and individual advocacy be measured and modeled to increase the probability of a major market event?
  
  • Organizational Optimization: Faced with an uncertain workload, what incentives cause employees to continually reorganize themselves to do the best possible job?
  
  • Bioterror Attack: Who should be innoculated in the event of a biological attack? Epstein’s simulations show the patterns of contact within communities and have been used by the Department of Homeland Security to develop and test a range of contingency plans.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Josh Epstein is the Director of the Center on Social and Economic Dynamics at The Brookings Institution, and the author of Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up. He is a pioneer in the field of agent-based modeling approaches and has applied them to the front-burner problems facing Americans: War, Terrorism, Health, Disaster Preparedness, Immigration, the Future of Cities.

Josh is a natural teacher and a great entertainer. Using computer-generated simulations, he lucidly explains why the bottom-up approach to explaining social phenomena gives better results and why these tools are so powerful and broadly applicable. It’s as if Newton were explaining the power of his newly discovered Calculus to uncover the secrets of the physical world, but applied to societal systems like business organizations, cities, or political decision makers. Epstein illustrates this power with compelling discussions of a wide range of examples, chosen for relevance to the audience.

Princeton University Press recently published Josh’s Generative Social Science, a volume bringing together work ranging from organizational behavior in business to the rise and fall of the ancient Anasazi in the Southwest.

A Closer Look at Josh

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Joshua's current research agenda?

• Josh’s main focus is global pandemic flu. Everyone has heard of the bird flu and the many deaths it has caused. So far, humans can only catch this disease from birds. The concern, within NIH, WHO, and governments worldwide, is that the bird flu will mutate into a bug that humans can transmit to one another, as occurred in 1918, giving rise to the Spanish Flu, which killed 50 million worldwide. No one knows how deadly a human to human avian flu would be, but modern air travel and high population densities ensure that it would spread exceedingly fast. Josh has built a global computer simulation of pandemic flu, with all the major cities of the world, linked by airlines, projected onto a map of the planet. He’s using it to study containment strategies and economic impacts for the US government, private institutions, and the World Bank.
• Josh also models civil conflicts, of the sort we see in Iraq. Many factors contribute to patterns of civil unrest: economic hardship, ideology and religion, military force and its use, agitation, history, and diplomacy. Most revolutions and civil wars come as surprises to insurgents and governments alike. They can be precipitated by repression or by liberalization. Josh builds computer models to understand and anticipate such “tipping events.”

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Joshua's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Josh’s epidemic modeling is of interest to the highest government and financial levels. Goldman Sachs invited him to present the global pandemic flu model as one of the top ten risks to the global economy. He’s currently collaborating with The World Bank on the same topic: What would be the economic impact of pandemic flu here and abroad?

Additionally, Josh directs the global modeling for NIH. He will direct modeling and simulation on a new University Center of Excellence at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, which was just awarded by the Department of Homeland Security.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Joshua's thinking and inspires his work?

• J.S. Bach
• Bertrand Russell