CeNDEF was started in October 1998and is located at the Department of Economics and Econometrics at the Universityof Amsterdam. CeNDEF brings together a group of senior researchers, post-doctoral research associates and PhD students from various fields, including economic theory, finance, mathematics, physics, statistics, econometrics and psychology. The main field of research is nonlinear dynamics in economics and finance in a broad sense. This includes themes such as endogenous fluctuations, bounded rationality, expectation formation and learning, evolutionary dynamics, bifurcations and chaos, nonlinear time series analysis and nonlinear prediction methods. The CeNDEF research program is a theoretical, an empirical as well as an experimental one.
Special attention is given to the role of market psychology in financial markets.
A central question in the CeNDEF research program is e.g. whether prices of risky assets are entirely determined by economic fundamentals or whether mass psychology as well as investors' expectations affect these prices significantly. Questions like this one will be addressed from a theoretical, experimental as well as an empirical point of view.